LOTR: Rings of Power (Amazon)

[Ser Jon]

I think the most enjoyable aspect of the show is the expansion of the world and that it is earnestly trying to be respectful to its lore. Yes, not all of it is accurate or happened in the literature (such as the Southland town names and the name Adar (due to copyright reasons)), but it's still pretty solid. Of course, only time can tell how far that goes or if they begin to completely butcher everything, but as it is now? I think most of it is enjoyable and the parts that aren't, can hopefully improve in further episodes or at least by S2.

At least it isn't like The Wheel of Time show. lol that was a disaster in both separate quality and its regard of canon lore. All it did was borrow character and setting names, and did a horrible AU fanfiction. I wish I could forget the episodes I forced myself through...now that was terrible.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I feel that it is very difficult to deliver something good when the main motivation behind it is money. And by that I am not saying that the previous movies were not motivated by financial gain, but I get the feeling that that was pretty much the only motivation behind this series. I get a similar vibe from the new star wars movies. When all you're doing is trying to milk the cash cow people can tell, and it's not a good look.

I think more specifically the problem is that they're designed entirely by committees and focus groups from the ground up, to a much further extent than the typical "we changed the ending to suit a test audience" thing that ruined all the high concept films of the 2000s. Vermilion Hawk's descriptions of this are basically identical to my first thoughts on The Force Awakens. It was just sludge, totally impossible to engage with either positively or negatively. You can tell that so many layers of bureaucracy were involved that they shaved the thing down to be completely unoffensive, removing any singular director's vision.

 

[NPC99]

Episode 3 was enough of an improvement to give episode 4 a chance. Great to see Numenor. Elendil was a solid breath of fresh air. Pity about the ludicrous hobbit sub-plot. Our leprechauns would have no role without a brain-dead Gandalf. Terribly artificial scripting to play to the galleries. What god sends a halfwit to save a planet? Someone tell the scriptwriters that Gandalf isn't mortal.

 

[Ser Jon]

Episode 3 was enough of an improvement to give episode 4 a chance. Great to see Numenor. Elendil was a solid breath of fresh air. Pity about the ludicrous hobbit sub-plot. Our leprechauns would have no role without a brain-dead Gandalf. Terribly artificial scripting to play to the galleries. What god sends a halfwit to save a planet? Someone tell the scriptwriters that Gandalf isn't mortal.

I don't think it's Gandalf, but another Maia entirely. Gandalf arrived in Middle-Earth in the Third Age and this is the Second Age. We also know that he arrived to Middle-Earth first through the meeting of prior Valinor friends, but in the show, this Stranger fell to the Harfoots. So I don't think this is Gandalf, but one of the other maiar, if not an entirely new one. If it is Olórin come as Gandalf, they have pretty much screwed up a crucial part of the timeline just with that. Though, if certain parts of the story are locked beyond copyrights, they will probably have no choice but to change or add in things.

 

[NPC99]

I don't think it's Gandalf, but another Maia entirely. Gandalf arrived in Middle-Earth in the Third Age and this is the Second Age. We also know that he arrived to Middle-Earth first through the meeting of prior Valinor friends, but in the show, this Stranger fell to the Harfoots. So I don't think this is Gandalf, but one of the other maiar, if not an entirely new one. If it is Olórin come as Gandalf, they have pretty much screwed up a crucial part of the timeline just with that. Though, if certain parts of the story are locked beyond copyrights, they will probably have no choice but to change or add in things.

Maybe, but this Maia is messing about with fire one of Gandalf's signatures.

 

[Ser Jon]

Maybe, but this Maia is messing about with fire one of Gandalf's signatures.

Eönwë is also associated to fire, but they could be dropping a new maiar/unnamed maia "sworn" to Varda (queen of stars). It would explain the star obsession, too. If it's Gandalf, I wonder how they will explain him dropping an age early. lol

 

[Swyter]

Unlike the Star Wars sequel trilogy, I do think this series has a heart and some planning. You can tell the people making this care about the end product and had some Tolkien scholar guys aboard.

It's a family-friendly adaptation, they are taking shortcuts, and it's not perfect by any means. But I'm having fun so far and the story is picking up.

 

[Adorno]

Episode 3 was okay. It's still a bit like amateur theatre.
Galadriel is annoyingly brash and unnuanced, but I guess it's part of her 'arc' to become wiser. It's just not very subtle.
Despite the big budget the ship scenes look like stage scenery. They should've watched Master & Commander

I don't think it's Gandalf [...]

They sure made him look like him.
So far I don't like that character. A mute, mysterious, comet man who's there to justify the harfoots as part of the story (clearly pivotal to the plot).

 

[Ser Jon]

They sure made him look like him.
So far I don't like that character. A mute, mysterious, comet man who's there to justify the harfoots as part of the story (clearly pivotal to the plot).

They did go for a Gandalf look, that's for sure. I just hope it's not, because that will mean they changed something pretty significant.

 

[NPC99]

ROP is improving. Still glitched by silly ideas like Mithril antidotes and recurring scenes where people put their hands up after weak speeches. However, ninja Galadriel is less irritating and hope remains that our zombie wizard will accidentally incinerate his leprechauns.

 

[Vermillion_Hawk]

I thought pretty much anything would have been an improvement after Make Numenor Great Again, but the deadpan seriousness with which they treated the absolute nonsense about mithril had my wife and I in tears of laughter. It's at least become a somewhat-amusing hate watch but ultimately I think we're done with it, I'd rather rewatch something made with care and craft than waste my time on the uncertainty of whether or not Jeff Bezos burning a giant pile of money will be entertaining, intentionally or not, this week.

 

[Adorno]

I'm getting more and more annoyed. It started so good. Now mining Mithril is a "Medieval" arms race? Come on.
The acting and characters continue to be stiff. The 'dark elf' is a brooding, ever serious, super soldier catching arrows mid-air.
If you can't write good characters you can always make them gloomy and stern.
The events in Numenor with diplomacy to unite forces is tedious and not interesting. Galadriel brings no new arguments - just emphatic speeches about 'evil coming' - and somehow convinces people to follow her. She's also an action hero. They put too much into that character to the point where it's bordering a cliché.
The harfoot story is also, literally, getting nowhere. We're just watching the mysterious 'meteor man' show his powers.
Building suspense and mystery simply by random magical stuff and dragging out an inevitable reveal is not good writing. Not to mention his amnesia.

 

[NPC99]

Galadriel brings no new arguments - just emphatic speeches about 'evil coming' - and somehow convinces people to follow her. She's also an action hero. They put too much into that character to the point where it's bordering a cliché.

She stopped irritating me when I stopped seeing her as the Galadriel, but a Galadriel. An unconnected character lacking grace, subtlety and magic. In truth, its impossible to see the future Galadriel in this portrayal, so relatively easy to shift my perspective.

If you can't write good characters you can always make them gloomy and stern.

The dark elf's ok. It's the script that's silly. Why would a truly evil Sauron? release a messenger and let him keep his bow or even his hands? They're not needed to talk. Maybe he's not really evil just badly slandered by Tolkien.

 

[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]

The 'dark elf'

c'mon, bud, surely you can come up with something cleverer than that

 

[Adorno]

 

[eddiemccandless]

I gotta say now that I have actually watched it, it is slightly better than Star Wars. Overall I would rate it "meh".

 

[Adorno]

More mithril nonsense. Suddenly Durin and wife is Macbeth and lady. Okay...
At first I thought the writing was excellent because of the source material and lore.
But it's increasingly clear the writers don't have the talent to work with it.

It's still a decent show with occasionally good scenes, it's just way more mediocre than I expected.

 

[kurczak]

I'm 10 minutes in the first episode and I am already confused. I am not a lotrhead.

The opening scene where the brother explains to the sister that a stone sinks in water because "it only looks downward" but a paper ship floats because "it looks also upward". What? Not that there aren't any metaphors between physics and human interactions, but you can't just take a random natural phenomenon and a moral and pretend it's deep. Hey, ever wonder why things cook faster in a pressure cooker? Because being creative and optimistic is good!

The elven dialogues sound like they were written by a try-hard ESL to my ESL ears. "Mordor was defeated, but not before much sorrow." Ah yes, the elves did the needful, dear sirs.
__________________________________________
Finished the first episode. It's kind of okay, I guess. I still think the elves sound a little off. The diversity casing seem redundant, but it's not terrible. The puertorican elf kind of passes, the black hobbits are a little goofier. Proto-Frodo as a woman actually makes sense for that character archetype.

 

[Adorno]

(No real spoilers ahead)

It might be far fetched, but I saw the rock/ship metaphor as a form of animism*.
How things - objects in the world - have will and desires.
We modern people, 'children of Aristotle and Christianity' just can't see it. Nature is dead, follows laws, and exists there for us to use.
The throwback to the metaphor at the end of the first episode (Galadriel jumping in the sea) was cool, or maybe I'm childishly naïve

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

The racial 'diversity' (a weird thing to say in Tolkien lore filled with races) is fine, I guess. I like both Disa (Durin's wife) and Sadoc (the old Harfoot guy).
It just raises some questions that I thought would be answered. Like the 'black action hero elf'.
Or the harfoots: we hear they are a reclusive people who haven't seen the world (the young Nori dreams of seeing the big world). And yet they are both dark and fair skinned, meaning they must have come from very different parts of the world (perhaps even antipodes). How does that make sense?
I think we all know the current political environment demands universal racial diversity and it trumps any artistic expressions, however inconsistent/paradoxical that may be.
With races being so paramount in Tolkien lore it obviously creates some confusion.

 

[kurczak]

Just finished episode 3.

I am all for re-enchanting the world. Philosophical materialism is boring af, but the stone v paper was just clumsy and bad.

Yeah, overall it's alright so far, I'll keep watching. It doesn't have quite the majesty and gravitas of Jackson's trilogy and it looks a little cheap relative to the production costs of cool $50+ million per episode. In comparison, GOT started at $5 million per episode and wrapped up at $15 million per episode.

But whatever, it still holds together and works.

I like the actress that play Galadriel, she conveys the elven "beautiful but not coomer bait" aesthetics well.

Spoiler: Race stuff

and yet they are both dark and fair skinned, meaning they must have come from very different parts of the world (perhaps even antipodes). How does that make sense?

Yeah, that's a large part of why the (real life racial) diversity feels a little strange. It was the same in Witcher and I assume it's the same in the GOT prequel., haven't seen. They present it so nonchalantly like it's no big deal, a random variation that just happens and people barely even notice it. But that's not how human races work, they came around after a long, long time of near gentic isolation (and a little bit of ethnic cleasning as modern archeogenetics shows)

The fact that the "diversity" is so nonchalant and banal in those fictional universes implies that

a) there were once upon a time separate races, just like with actual humans, otherwise everyone would be just one, most likely black, race like the archaic humans.But it could be any race, you could pretend that in that universe, humans came around from arctic monkeys or whatever.

b) that the previously separate races have been at some point brought together, not so long ago that they would now be just one phenotype, but long ago enough that race wouldn't be an issue. BUT it that were the case, that would mean the we should see all kinds of mulattoes and mestizos and quadroons and all kinds of inbetweeners and hybrids. Just like in certain parts of Europe, cough Western Slavs cough, you can see all kinds intra-White hybrids. People have blue eyes, green eyes, grey, brown. Straight, wavy, curly, blonde, red, brown and even some proper black hair. All seemingly random (but of course, it's not, just pretty thoroughly mixed)

But as you say, it's a political statement, no amount of reasoning will accomplish anything here. I just find the "representation matters" schtick so annoying. Yeah kids can only relate to characters that looks EXACTLY look like them, even though time and again the most popular characters for kids are anthropomorphized animals. Also it makes no sense to say that racial representation matters and then act like well why are they mad at originally white characters recasts with non-whites? Race doesn't exist, checkmate Hitler. No, pick one.

Just occurred to me that the Elder Scrolls universe has a well executed example of racial diversity - the Redguards are effectively Africans, a human race from another continent that migrated to Tamriel. It is addressed, it is explained, it makes sense and it's fine.