Amazon goes insane: LOTR prequel series incoming

[Evie]

I'm sorry to hear that, Synobun .

I'd put it I think in the 7.5-8.5 range, but a lot of it depends on question from the first into the second season (which will apparently be the series that gives us the meat about Sauron and his schemes). There were things I wish they had done differently, others which I think are unfairly criticized, and others which are just good, but all in all ot did a suitable job of building a solid world and getting the story started in it.

It's definitely not a series for stand alone seasons; this story is basically like the first book (one sixth, not one third) of LOTR. The Fellowshi doesn't even exist at that point.

 

[EvaDK]

Yeah a 6.5-7/10 from me as well. Imo they screwed up the one thing they absolutely should not screw up; Tolkien's lore surrounding the forging of the rings and Sauron's backstory.

Strictly speaking

Spoiler :

the Lord of the Rings is no lord of any rings at all, because Sauron did not forge any rings with Celebrimbor in Amazon's version of events. How do you f**k that up in a series called - The Lord of the Rings?

 

[Evie]

It seems far more likely between what has been said and shown that Celebrimbor, who wasn't told who Halbrand was, is going to ignore Galadriel's warning about strangers bearing gifts and work with a helpful stranger again to make more rings. Who may call himself Annatar. It appears a little clunky on paper but they've made clunkier things work.

It's not like Celebrimbor ignoring Galadriel's warnings to work with Annatar is not canon. He absolutely did, canonically. And possibly threw a coup against her in Eregion over it.

So the big change in that case would be just moving the three from last made to first made of the Great Rings. Which is probably because the Elven Rings fit best with Sauron's current "I want to heal Middle Earth (which only I can do so requires me to be in charge)" "fair motives" (fair motives being Tolkien's own description of early S.A. Sauron), which will fade away over the story into "I must dominate all things" without any intent to heal anymore. Forging the Seven and Nine to ensnare others actually likely fit better later in his descent.

 

[Evie]

To add! The showrunners have confirmed that this is the case: the three were moved to the top of the list, and the Seven, Nine and One (of course) remain to be forged in the future, and their comment on that is "there are more gifts yet to come".

They've also noted they didn't want to use a name this season that would mean nothing to half the audience and be a dead giveaway to the other half.

 

[Kyriakos]

They've also noted they didn't want to use a name this season that would mean nothing to half the audience and be a dead giveaway to the other half.

And then made an announcement about it? ^_^
Doesn't sound like a coherent strategy.

 

[Kyriakos]

Will the real slim lady please stand up?

 

[EvaDK]

To add! The showrunners have confirmed that this is the case: the three were moved to the top of the list, and the Seven, Nine and One (of course) remain to be forged in the future, and their comment on that is "there are more gifts yet to come".

They've also noted they didn't want to use a name this season that would mean nothing to half the audience and be a dead giveaway to the other half.

I think I may have spotted Sauron's disguise in Season 2

Spoiler :

 

[Kyriakos]

Pitch Meetings are tight.

 

[Plotinus]

I finally finished it. I thought it was pretty decent, but dreadfully drawn out. The whole story could have easily been fitted into a single film and would probably have benefited from it.

Also, dwarves being loud, drunken, boorish, and Scottish really, really annoys me. Tolkien’s dwarves are none of these things.

 

[Ajidica]

Also, dwarves being loud, drunken, boorish, and Scottish really, really annoys me. Tolkien’s dwarves are none of these things.

I'm not sure I would go quite that far. A constant quality we saw with the dwarves in the LotR books was a sense of hard-headed skepticism, like the following quotes:
-If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
--Thorin Oakenshield

-It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.
--Gimli

-I say neither yea nor nay. I must consider this message and what it means under its fair cloak.... The time of my thought is my own to spend.
--Dain

Tom Shippey argued that the language of the dwarves and Gimli provide a contrast to the elves being more of a realistic style. It exists as a middle ground between the high romance of the Elves and Numenor and the Edwardian gentlemen of the Hobbits.

That sort style is very hard to do for skilled authors, let alone in the limited linguistic medium of television. The drinking, boorishness, and general "Scottishness" of the dwarves does sort of serve to provide that contrast with the elves. The "actual" dwarves from the sagas like Andvari and Regin are too alien to viewers to serve as an inspiration, and the producers probably wisely decided to stay away from the Jewish vibes the dwarves give off.


Anyhow, I watched the first three episodes when I was at my parents over thankgiving. As high fantasy, solid 7/10. As Lord of the Rings, probably a 2/10. The armor though was particularly hideous.
In lore-terms, of what I saw that annoyed me the most was the idea that an elf can only return to Valinor if the High King lets them. The Ban was lifted after the War of Wrath, those who wanted to return to Valinor could. Those who didn't, chose to stay in Middle Earth whether out of love for the land, a desire to rule the land, or both.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

I finally finished the rings of powers. I would give it 4 out of 5. For me there were only a couple of clear negatives. Firstly the series was slow getting going. It wasn't until episode 3 that I started to become truly invested. Secondly Galadriel. Almost everything about her is a negative!

Hopefully series 2 can build on series 1. I would love to see the Blue Wizards. They seem perfect for this series, bare bones that can be fully fleshed out.

It makes me sad the series gets so much hate. I actually reviewed it on rotten tomatoes (which I never do) as I was tired of seeing half star reviews saying it was the worst thing to have ever been shown on tv!

 

[Ajidica]

I would love to see the Blue Wizards. They seem perfect for this series, bare bones that can be fully fleshed out.

Unfortunately, the Blue Wizards only show up several thousand years later.

That is one thing that irritated me about the Rings of Power series - they only have rights to what is in the LotR books, but nothing from Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, History of Middle Earth, etc. In other words, apart from a few vague sentences and terse appendix entries, the producers have the rights to use literally none of the material Tolkien wrote about the Second Age, the Rings of Power, or the Fall of Numenor!
That's why I think them setting the series in the Second Age was a really bad idea, given the material they have the rights to.
Tolkien went into pretty good detail on the fall of the North Kingdom of Arnor and how the Dunedain became the Rangers. You have civil war, Gondor, Dunedain, alliances, elves, dwarves, Glorfindel, the Witch-King of Angmar, Barrow-Wights, and even Hobbits!
Or, if they wanted something that had basically no lore-constraints, they could move to the Lonely Mountain and Rhovanion. You have the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountains, the Dragons of the Grey Mountain, the elven realm of Thranduil (and could probably sqeeze Legolas in there), the precursors to the Rohirrim, some Hobbit-folk in Anduin, the skin-shifters like Beorn, and could probably fit in the Witch-King again. The early Rohirrim have a great Norse Saga vibe, with the slaying of the dragon Scatha by Fram, only to be betrayed and killed by the dwarves.

 

[Evie]

Plotinus - in Galadriel's case whether the ban still existed or not is...open to discussion. Which is to say Tolkien wrote it both ways. A lot.

Adjidica - actually, the Blues would be on time. Another case of Tolkien changing his mind. People of Middle Earth (HOME XII) , chapter "Late writings", section "of Glorfindel", and the more recent Nature of Middle Earth ("on the delay of Gil Galad and the Numenorean") both refer to the Blues arriving in the Second Age to help weaken Sauron in the East prior to the War of the Elves and Sauron, and they postdate the Essay on the Istari from UT).

The stranger is unlikely to ever be named as one of them due to the rights - there are limits to wink wink nudge nudge inspiration -, but the concept of an Istari going to Rhun at this particular time is certainly rooted in Tolkien's writings

A story about the North Kingdom would have the same issue as a Second Age story: Tolkien's enormously long (from a human perspective; very sensible for Elves and immortal undeads) timeline. Which must either be compressed in some way or involve human roles constantly getting recast at a pace even House of the Dragon didn't dare try (and HOTD caught a lot of flak for constant recasting), and HOTD just changed the actor, not the characters themselves! This is the main hurdle for making any sort of Middle Earth prequel: very little happens per human lifetime in Tolkien's backstory up until Aragorn is born.

The only exception where little compression is needed is the Silmarillion (where nearly every important story takes place over about a century), but that's a whole other story.

I kinda wish they had taken a more The Crown like approach (3 blocks of two seasons each with their own cast, so you can have time jump between them, then season 1-2 has Early Numenor and the forging of the Rings and the War of the Elves and Sauron; season 3-4 has the rise of the Ringwraiths, the King's Men/Faithful division in Numenor, and Numenor's increasingly oppressive colonization of Middle Earth, and 5-6 has Sauron going to Numenor, the Downfall and the Last Alliance. But even then each of those three Blocks still compress several hundred years in one human lifetime.

 

[Ajidica]

Plotinus - in Galadriel's case whether the ban still existed or not is...open to discussion. Which is to say Tolkien wrote it both ways. A lot.

Adjidica - actually, the Blues would be on time. Another case of Tolkien changing his mind. People of Middle Earth (HOME XII) , chapter "Late writings", section "of Glorfindel", and the more recent Nature of Middle Earth ("on the delay of Gil Galad and the Numenorean") both refer to the Blues arriving in the Second Age to help weaken Sauron in the East prior to the War of the Elves and Sauron, and they postdate the Essay on the Istari from UT).

[/QUOTE]
Never realized Tolkien went back on his thoughts about the Istari. But then again, since the producers only have rights to the LotR books, the Blue Wizards couldn't appear no matter what Tolkien dithered about later on.
Incidentally, I tend to discount Tolkien's later revisions, as so much of them are tied up with his end of life depression; such as turning Galadriel into basically the Virgin Mary who fought against the Noldor at Alqualonde because she was just so pure and good.

Regarding time compression, they are already going to have to do serious time-compression in Rings of Power, otherwise the entire arrival of Numenor to Middle Earth, transformation from teachers into colonists into cruel masters who cut down trees, the fall of Numenor, and presumably the War of the Last Alliance will have to be compressed into a decade or so! Squishing the key events of the Fall of the North Kingdom into a few decades or more as we have elves and Dunedain around wouldn't be much of a problem.

 

[Evie]

I tend to discount Tolkien's later revision where they contradict what he published in his lifetime. But Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales? Nah, they were just as much draft material as the rest. The Essay on the Istari has no more value than the later stuff. I'd also argue that ignoring the later stuff loses out on so much of Tolkien's best post-first age worldbuilding as to leave a much diminished Middle Earth. As to Galadriel, considering that her mother was a Teleri of Alqualonde, and her grandfather is the king thereof, and that none of the Children of Finarfin ever took part in the kinslaying to begin, I don't take it as a sign of purity and goodness that she would defend them. She's just fighting for her people, and if you go with a plotline where she's in Alqualonde during the kinslaying, it's really the only reasonably in-character plotline. She's not going to side with Feanor over her mother.

As for rights, there's a gray area to rights - they cannot use the story as written (and they aren't), and they certainly can't (without special permission) name this character Blue Wizard/Alatar/Pallando/East-Helper/whatever other names Tolkien had, but they can use the later material to color their understanding and interpretation of the story in LOTR that they can tell, and some degree of alluding to that material appears to be permissible.

Significant timeline compression was happening any which way in any show, yes. - There's no story in Tolkien that don't require it.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Also, dwarves being loud, drunken, boorish, and Scottish really, really annoys me. Tolkien’s dwarves are none of these things.

THEY ARE *BURP* NOW, LADDY.

 

[Takhisis]

Glorfindel

You mean Arwen.

The early Rohirrim have a great Norse Saga vibe, with the slaying of the dragon Scatha by Fram, only to be betrayed and killed by the dwarves.

Actually, they are explicitly speakers of an old West Germanic tongue if you check their vocabulary. They are even called the Northmen.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

That is one thing that irritated me about the Rings of Power series - they only have rights to what is in the LotR books, but nothing from Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, History of Middle Earth, etc. In other words, apart from a few vague sentences and terse appendix entries, the producers have the rights to use literally none of the material Tolkien wrote about the Second Age, the Rings of Power, or the Fall of Numenor!

Why on earth would they only get LorR books and not the rest. I can't imagine once they had permission in any form, to get the rest would have cost much more?

 

[Samson]

Why on earth would they only get LorR books and not the rest. I can't imagine once they had permission in any form, to get the rest would have cost much more?

My understanding is that Tolkien's family as the rights holders would not licence them more than that. I think it is a bit odd, they have 20 years until it is out of copyright, would they not want to get as much value out of it as they can? That has to be a silmarillion set of films in the next decade or two, and it will take a decade or two to do it justice.

 

[r16]

in this age of wokery , they are stopping people to wreck it all .