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 Grey Templar wrote:
I will give them a chance, but I am skeptical and will not tolerate any desecration of the source material. They need to at least be faithful to it and not do dumb woke stuff just for the sake of woke stuff.

Strictly speaking, Elrond shouldn't be the doubter that evil is still around. He was one of the wise who did not believe Annatar's lies and was skeptical of what he said.

 Olthannon wrote:
My biggest problem with it at the minute is Sauron looking like fething Eminem

I actually have zero issue with Sauron being... Sexy. Alluring. Enticing...

Sauron took on a fair form, calling himself Annatar(Lord of Gifts) he claimed to be an emissary of the Valar and offered knowledge to the elves. Gil-galad and Elrond mistrusted him and sent him away, but he found willing ears in Celebrimbor.

.

this, Saruon SHOULD look pretty during the 2nd age

 Grey Templar wrote:
I will give them a chance, but I am skeptical and will not tolerate any desecration of the source material. They need to at least be faithful to it and not do dumb woke stuff just for the sake of woke stuff.

Define "dumb woke stuff", beyond "cast people who aren't white".

BrianDavion wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I will give them a chance, but I am skeptical and will not tolerate any desecration of the source material. They need to at least be faithful to it and not do dumb woke stuff just for the sake of woke stuff.

Strictly speaking, Elrond shouldn't be the doubter that evil is still around. He was one of the wise who did not believe Annatar's lies and was skeptical of what he said.

 Olthannon wrote:
My biggest problem with it at the minute is Sauron looking like fething Eminem

I actually have zero issue with Sauron being... Sexy. Alluring. Enticing...

Sauron took on a fair form, calling himself Annatar(Lord of Gifts) he claimed to be an emissary of the Valar and offered knowledge to the elves. Gil-galad and Elrond mistrusted him and sent him away, but he found willing ears in Celebrimbor.

.

this, Saruon SHOULD look pretty during the 2nd age

Yes, I'm a little worried you pair may have misunderstood what I said. I'm saying Eminem looks like an ugly fether. And thus Sauron looks like an ugly fether. The exact opposite of Annatar

Nothing about Eminem is sexy and alluring.

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.

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.

The Eminem looking blonde character everyone is saying is Sauron actually isn't Sauron though.

It's actually a female actress, Bridie Sisson, playing some sort of cult leader.

Sauron hasn't been shown in the trailers yet.

Nooooo...

No!

That would mean we've been taken in by the endless cycle of regurgitated media rumormongering bs!

Oh wow, that does look like Sisson.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I will give them a chance, but I am skeptical and will not tolerate any desecration of the source material. They need to at least be faithful to it and not do dumb woke stuff just for the sake of woke stuff.

Define "dumb woke stuff", beyond "cast people who aren't white".

Female Numenorean soldiers would come to mind, if that's indeed what they are.

As someone who loved LotR (both book and films) and the Hobbit (book only, films were awful) but could never manage to get through the Silmarillion (on the second attempt I made it as far as page 8) I'm actually quite looking forward to this. I get to experience the story that people have told me is supposed to be great without having to wade through tedious lists of names all the time.

StraightSilver wrote:
The Eminem looking blonde character everyone is saying is Sauron actually isn't Sauron though.

It's actually a female actress, Bridie Sisson, playing some sort of cult leader.

Sauron hasn't been shown in the trailers yet.

Having done a googly moogly, that definitely seems to be the way. In which case, very interesting. That is the better option, that Sauron simply hasn't been shown/ might be kept secretive until a big ole plot point. As Annatar we know he was a shapeshifter, so perhaps we might never know who he is and instead constantly whispering and sneaking. Which is a good thing.

EDIT: Also I'm sorry but Anson Boon? That simply isn't a real name.

pgmason wrote:
As someone who loved LotR (both book and films) and the Hobbit (book only, films were awful) but could never manage to get through the Silmarillion (on the second attempt I made it as far as page 8) I'm actually quite looking forward to this. I get to experience the story that people have told me is supposed to be great without having to wade through tedious lists of names all the time.

The simirilion starts dull, gets real good real fast, then degrades into each chapter beginning with a page or 2 of "x son of y daughter of z who did a with b in the age of c" nonsense.

 Lance845 wrote:

pgmason wrote:
As someone who loved LotR (both book and films) and the Hobbit (book only, films were awful) but could never manage to get through the Silmarillion (on the second attempt I made it as far as page 8) I'm actually quite looking forward to this. I get to experience the story that people have told me is supposed to be great without having to wade through tedious lists of names all the time.

The simirilion starts dull, gets real good real fast, then degrades into each chapter beginning with a page or 2 of "x son of y daughter of z who did a with b in the age of c" nonsense.

And then you get to the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Mormegil The Black Sword, The Sacking of Gondolin and the story of Beren and Luthien, and oh my.

I'm neither here nor there concerning the trailer. I don't doubt I will watch it and I wouldn't be surprised if it did to a new generation what the movies did to the current gen of tolkien fandom.

 ik0ner wrote:
I'm neither here nor there concerning the trailer. I don't doubt I will watch it and I wouldn't be surprised if it did to a new generation what the movies did to the current gen of tolkien fandom.

Nah I predict it going the way of GOT.

Amazing books.

Adaptation, by the time it gets to the end all the "fans" the series created don't care about it the minute the last gakky episode is finished or even before then.
Thus resulting in alienating the original fans, and loosing the temporary "new" fans (mostly younger folk) who were only fans because its the "new cool" thing and loose interest because they have attention span of a goldfish.

Like right not if martin dropped the next book in the series i don't think id even bother reading it. let alone spend a penny on anything to do with it.

Recon this will be the new final nail in the coffin for Tolkien's world in much the same way.

At least we have the OG trilogy and all the books and can ignore this abomination.

Like spending 50 mil an episode and then showing pictures of people wearing armor clearly made from foam... jeeezus...

I don’t think GoT died the way it did because the series ended, but because of how Badly it ended.

GoT had a crap ending because GRRM doesn’t know how it ends, and two people hired to adapt book had to write stuff, which isn’t really the same task.

Sure they could’ve had more time, as it was offered to them. But man…if GRRM doesn’t know how it ends (hence him not finishing his books), that’s still mostly on him.

Plus there was the whole "We're gonna get a Star War" thing for the showrunners which hilariously didn't happen. And then there was that interview they did which killed off any of the goodwill the early seasons had left. And the many actors saying how awful it was to work for the show.

AduroT wrote:I don’t think GoT died the way it did because the series ended, but because of how Badly it ended.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:GoT had a crap ending because GRRM doesn’t know how it ends, and two people hired to adapt book had to write stuff, which isn’t really the same task.

Sure they could’ve had more time, as it was offered to them. But man…if GRRM doesn’t know how it ends (hence him not finishing his books), that’s still mostly on him.

I appreciate what you guys are saying. We wont know but I think a lot of the fizz came because it ended rather then how it ended. Bit like marvel keeps going with their multiple phases. I thin if they stopped making movies the revenues would drop to reflect that as a lot of people are interested only in the movies and might pick up some side merch but are not really money spending fans. Dunno if that makes sense.

It will be interesting to see how house of dragon does. like, I am aware of it but have no interest in it because have no interest in GOT at all anymore.
I think it will air similar time to ROP if I'm not mistaken.

Will be interesting how these do I guess.

Personally not really in the market for investing that sort of time for something that at first glance appears very cookie cutter holywood show runner bull crap.

Plus Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, not really on the same level.

There's a good team of writers and creatives on the project, so I think it's set to be good.

pgmason wrote:
As someone who loved LotR (both book and films) and the Hobbit (book only, films were awful) but could never manage to get through the Silmarillion (on the second attempt I made it as far as page 8) I'm actually quite looking forward to this. I get to experience the story that people have told me is supposed to be great without having to wade through tedious lists of names all the time.

Skip the show, listen to the album instead:

 Gert wrote:
Plus there was the whole "We're gonna get a Star War" thing for the showrunners which hilariously didn't happen. And then there was that interview they did which killed off any of the goodwill the early seasons had left. And the many actors saying how awful it was to work for the show.

Oo, what interview? Not sure I have knowledge of that.

 AduroT wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Plus there was the whole "We're gonna get a Star War" thing for the showrunners which hilariously didn't happen. And then there was that interview they did which killed off any of the goodwill the early seasons had left. And the many actors saying how awful it was to work for the show.

Oo, what interview? Not sure I have knowledge of that.

Was that the interview where they were like "haha we don't know what we are doing! We just fell into this job and got it." ?

 Dysartes wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I will give them a chance, but I am skeptical and will not tolerate any desecration of the source material. They need to at least be faithful to it and not do dumb woke stuff just for the sake of woke stuff.

Define "dumb woke stuff", beyond "cast people who aren't white".

Inserting poorly veiled modern political/social commentary that does not belong in the setting. Nothing we've been actively shown shows anything like this, but interviews with the creators is concerning. Ar-Pharazon better not be a "totally-not-Trump-lets-make-numenor-great-again" douche. Don't go down that path.

There is nothing wrong with casting non-white people. It becomes wrong if you base the entire identity of a character around them "not being white" or if you cast a specific actor because they were "not-white". Or if you change a character's race just so you can meet some diversity quota. That is lazy and disrespectful to the actor because you are literally reducing them to a caricature solely based on their race. If they actually want Race to be some focal point within the setting, there are good and bad ways to do that. The bad way is to just frame it around white men/elves/dwarves vs colored men/elves/dwarves. It doesn't make sense within the setting and is just a primitive insertion of real-world drama in a way that will just cheapen the story. If you want to actually have this in a way that works, you need to have it in a way that works within the setting, doesn't break the setting, etc...

In the setting of Middle Earth, this means that you frame race related issues NOT along the modern day Earth race, but Middle Earth races. You can have tensions between Elves and the Kings Men Numenoreans. Tensions between Numenoreans and Middle Men(literally any human who is not of Numenorean descent). Tensions between Sylvan and Noldor elves. Tensions between Elves and Dwarves.

These are things you can use as stand-ins for race related plot points, but they shouldn't be reduced on-screen to "I'ma racist, that guy has the wrong skin tone, lets hate him!", that is when it becomes too thinly veiled and breaks the setting.

To use an example that could happen in the show. Numenoreans looking down on Middle Men who have dark skin, but not Middle Men with light skin. That would be setting breaking. A Numenorean supremacist would look down on a Middle Man not because of his skin color, there are many middle men who have fair skin just like Numenoreans do. He would look down on them all because none of them are Dunedain.

TL DR I want a show that tells the story that was written by Tolkein, not some modern day social-political commentary Tolkein fan-fic.

One of the things The Expanse got right was that the characters just were who whey were. There were different in universe cultures, but race/skin color was not really relevant to anything. This new LOTR show seems like it is not going to be as organic, they're pulling in real world socio-political stuff into it, Tolkien would be rolling over in his grave. This show is going to be hot corporate garbage, they're not even trying to hide it.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
I will give them a chance, but I am skeptical and will not tolerate any desecration of the source material. They need to at least be faithful to it and not do dumb woke stuff just for the sake of woke stuff.

Define "dumb woke stuff", beyond "cast people who aren't white".

Inserting poorly veiled modern political/social commentary that does not belong in the setting. Nothing we've been actively shown shows anything like this, but interviews with the creators is concerning. Ar-Pharazon better not be a "totally-not-Trump-lets-make-numenor-great-again" douche. Don't go down that path.

There is nothing wrong with casting non-white people. It becomes wrong if you base the entire identity of a character around them "not being white" or if you cast a specific actor because they were "not-white". Or if you change a character's race just so you can meet some diversity quota. That is lazy and disrespectful to the actor because you are literally reducing them to a caricature solely based on their race. If they actually want Race to be some focal point within the setting, there are good and bad ways to do that. The bad way is to just frame it around white men/elves/dwarves vs colored men/elves/dwarves. It doesn't make sense within the setting and is just a primitive insertion of real-world drama in a way that will just cheapen the story. If you want to actually have this in a way that works, you need to have it in a way that works within the setting, doesn't break the setting, etc...

In the setting of Middle Earth, this means that you frame race related issues NOT along the modern day Earth race, but Middle Earth races. You can have tensions between Elves and the Kings Men Numenoreans. Tensions between Numenoreans and Middle Men(literally any human who is not of Numenorean descent). Tensions between Sylvan and Noldor elves. Tensions between Elves and Dwarves.

These are things you can use as stand-ins for race related plot points, but they shouldn't be reduced on-screen to "I'ma racist, that guy has the wrong skin tone, lets hate him!", that is when it becomes too thinly veiled and breaks the setting.

To use an example that could happen in the show. Numenoreans looking down on Middle Men who have dark skin, but not Middle Men with light skin. That would be setting breaking. A Numenorean supremacist would look down on a Middle Man not because of his skin color, there are many middle men who have fair skin just like Numenoreans do. He would look down on them all because none of them are Dunedain.

TL DR I want a show that tells the story that was written by Tolkein, not some modern day social-political commentary Tolkein fan-fic.

Hit the nail on the head for me. Especially when modern writing from Hollywood on such topics is so hamfisted and poorly implemented, especially for adaptations on existing work, them focusing on "modernizing" their take on Tolkien's works is a huge red flag.

 AduroT wrote:
Oo, what interview? Not sure I have knowledge of that.

Nabbed an article for you:
https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/28/jason-momoas-audition-not-knowing-game-thrones-writers-spill-biggest-interview-since-finale-10998872/

A brief summary is that one of their dads had an in so they got the job with no experience, presented the show as the pilot, and somehow got it greenlit, they deliberately didn't put anyone who wasn't them in the writer's room and refused to hire more writers despite HBO saying they should, and the big one is that at no point did they ever read any feedback from fans ever.
Basically, they had no right to be given the show but got it anyway and used it as a way to get experience while being protected by a corporation.

Have they done much of anything since?

 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.

 AduroT wrote:
Have they done much of anything since?

They were slated to get a Star Wars trilogy, which is why many believe GoT S8 was as rushed and bad as it was, and at the same time said they were going to make an HBO show called "Confederate" where the CSA had "won" the American Civil War and seceded. The latter got a huge negative reaction as it was intended to portray the CSA in the modern day with slavery still legal and was a bad apple from the get-go.
Neither of these materialised because the duo got a Netflix deal for $200m and so far they've made one comedy special.

I know this is not the GOT thread but I think the proposed John Snow show could save the story line.

Just treat it as GOT S9, show how terrible the decisions made at the end of S8 worked out and go from there. After all we were watching for the intrigue, betrayal and 'anyone can die anytime', just go back to that.

The biggest problem with S8 is was the last one. Imagine how pissed we'd all be if it had ended with Joffery as king.