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Dropping September 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewgCqJDI_Nk The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is Amazon's new series based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, but specifically not the familiar story that we're all aware of from the Peter Jackson movies, and also not an adaptation of Tolkien's lifelong pet project The Silmarillion which served as the backstory for LotR. Those works remain unfilmable by Amazon due to somehow, inexplicably, not having enough money to own the rights to them. This means that the upcoming series will (to oversimplify it) be placed within the Appendices of LotR, which is the only thing Amazon actually does own the rights to — that plus a few aspects of The Silmarillion that reportedly have been negotiated with the Tolkien estate. The story will be set in the Second Age, placing it between the Silmarillion (First Age) and LotR (Third Age), and encompass events such as: - The founding and destruction of Númenor - Sauron's rise to power and forging of the Rings - The rise of the Elven kingdoms in Middle-earth: Lórien, Rivendell, Eregion - The establishment of Gondor and Arnor as the Númenórean kingdoms in exile - And many smaller sub-stories such as the rise of Hobbits and the Dwarf-kingdoms The show reportedly costs over $1 billion for a 5-season run, which makes it the most expensive TV show of all time. A PSA for those who might be new to certain areas of discussion around Tolkien's universe and this show's depiction of it: WoodrowSkillson posted:Thats the book of Mormon. In the Silmarillion a large chunk of the bad humans are "swarthy" because they come from the east and south of middle earth, so areas analogous to the middle east and africa. Tolkien never claimed that dark skinned people are bad, he just set up his world so thats how it happened. A LITTLE LORE BACKSTORY The show has no rights to the Silmarillion material, so it is proceeding to tell a story that does not depend on your knowing any of it and is not able to go into any great detail about what background it provides. For the benefit of show watchers who are not familiar with it, but who want to understand all the impenetrable Silmarillion jargon that people in the thread are talking about, here is some necessary terminology and a super-synopsis of The Story Thus Far. Peoples and races: Eru or Ilúvatar This is God. He created the universe, but did not directly create Arda, the World in which we live. He lives outside Arda in his own "halls", where he created the Ainur. The Ainur can be thought of as angels or "gods" in the Greek/Roman sense, and they too started life outside Arda. There are hundreds of them. Ilúvatar one day told the Ainur that he wanted to create the Universe, or Existence, which is called Eä. To do this, he first led the Ainur in a great Music, where they sang Eä into being. (This is what is depicted impressionistically in the show's title sequence.) They sang the themes that Ilúvatar gave them to sing, which sketched out the future history of the world, including the birth of the Children of Ilúvatar, Elves and Men. This music was great and wonderful beyond description, but was marred by one of the Ainur, Melkor, trying to introduce his own themes into it and overpower all the rest of them. The result of this was Ilúvatar telling Melkor that even his own rebellion was part of Ilúvatar's vision, and despite all the selfishness and evil he might do, it would only result in greater glory to Eä and to Ilúvatar in the end. Then Ilúvatar said the word Eä! and the Universe came into being, but in a primordial and unformed state, and he told the Ainur that it was now up to them to build and shape it for real according to the blueprints they had just sung. The Valar Once Eä was made real and Arda was created within it, some of the greatest of the Ainur took on physical form and went down into it. These are the Valar, or Powers. They can be thought of as analogous to Greek or Norse gods. There are 14 of them, not counting Melkor. Some of the notable ones are Manwë (Jupiter/Zeus/Woden), Varda (his Queen, who created the stars, also known as Elbereth), Ulmo (Neptune/Poseidon), Aulë the Smith, Yavanna the spirit of Nature, Oromë the Hunter, Mandos the Doomsayer and keeper of the dead, and Tulkas the god of punching and laughing. The Valar entered Eä and set to work creating the World, or Arda, which in its initial conception was flat and lit by two huge lamps on pillars, one in the north and one in the south. But Melkor was a poo poo and kept kicking over the mountains they built and spilling the lamps, and while ultimately they succeeded in completing Arda in spite of him, he left his mark on it in every asymmetrical or ugly or hosed-up aspect you see in it. Think of it as Original Sin for the world, Satan's touch at the moment of Creation. The Maiar Every Ainu who is not a Vala (and who did not stay outside Eä with Ilúvatar) is a Maia. There are hundreds or thousands of them. These are the same kinds of creatures as the Valar, just less powerful and of lower rank. The Maiar encompass figures ranging from Arien and Tilion (the pilots of the Sun and Moon) and Ossë and Uinen (sea spirits responsible for storms, vassals of Ulmo) and Sauron (once a craftsman in service of Aulë) to the Istari or Wizards, of which Gandalf and Saruman are members, and the Valaraukar or Balrogs (who once were basically powerful angels). Nearly every sentient spirit in Middle-earth which appears to be some form of monster or supernatural creature is a fallen Maia, one who was taken into the service of Melkor during his rebellion (and there were a LOT of these). This includes dragons, Balrogs, trolls, sea monsters, giant worms, things like the Watcher in the Water — basically anything without a better explanation. Once the World was fully established and Melkor was (temporarily) subdued, it was time for the awakening of the Firstborn, or the Elves. This happened in the far East of the world, where the only light was from the stars Varda had created. The only true light was in the West, in Valinor (or Aman), the Blessed Realm, where the Valar had set up shop behind a vast mountain range to protect their land from Melkor. They grew two enormous Trees which gave off silver and golden light respectively, Telperion and Laurelin. The Eldar (Elves) The Three Kindreds of the Elves awoke by a lake far from Valinor, and Oromë stumbled upon them while hunting one day. He gradually made them aware of him and became trusted by them, teaching them language and lore, and after consulting with the Valar (who by this point were on their own and no longer directly in communication with Ilúvatar, so they were guessing at his intent as much as you or I would be) they decided to bring them to Valinor to protect them from Melkor, who was still at large in the world. So the Vanyar (blonde and poetry-loving), the Noldor (dark-haired, grey-eyed, and knowledge-seeking), and the Teleri (the largest group, lovers of music and of Middle-earth in particular, so they kept hanging back and many never made it to Valinor at all) made the trek to Valinor and to the light of the Trees, which conferred great wisdom and power on them. However, Melkor managed to ensnare some of the Elves and terrify them away from following Oromë to Valinor, and caused them to stay in the dark of Middle-earth and become separated from the rest of the Elves. It is thought that these (along with millennia of torment and engineering by Melkor) are the origins of the Orcs. The Elves, being immortal, lived in Valinor for many thousands of years in bliss, and this period is when many of the greatest figures in the lore (including Galadriel, who was a Noldo but blonde because her grandmother was of the Vanyar) were born. It is also when Fëanor, probably the greatest of the Elves and the mightiest inventor and craftsman, and also the biggest and pettiest rear end in a top hat, created the three Silmarils from the light of the Trees, to the wonder and delight of all, including the Valar. However, this age came to an end when Melkor (with the help of the giant spider Ungoliant, a primordial spirit of some kind, perhaps a fallen Maia, perhaps something worse) attacked and killed the two Trees, stole the Silmarils from Fëanor, and fled leaving Valinor in darkness. That is when Fëanor called Melkor Morgoth, the Dark Enemy, and that was his name from then on. Fëanor swore a terrible oath in Ilúvatar's name to pursue Morgoth and get the Silmarils back, and he led his seven sons and thousands of Noldor across the Sea to Middle-earth. On the way there he stole the ships of the Teleri (who had by then become great shipbuilders) and killed them when they stood up to him; this is the Kinslaying, which is the great curse of the Noldor and one of the first terrible fruits of Fëanor's oath, for which the Valar officially banished all the Noldor following Fëanor into exile. He also left behind a huge number of his own people, who could not fit on the ships or would not take part in the Kinslaying, and he burned the ships upon landing rather than send them back to ferry them across; and they were forced to cross to Middle-earth via the ice-filled Helcaraxë (basically the Bering Strait during the Ice Age), many of them dying in the process, and none of them well disposed toward Fëanor afterwards. But they hated Morgoth more than they hated him. Fëanor could have restored the Trees if he had given up the Silmarils to extract their light, but he couldn't bear to see his work destroyed, and so he doomed the whole world to darkness. But the Valar were able to save the last fruits from the dying Trees and created the Sun and Moon from them, and when the Elves landed in Middle-earth, the Sun rose for the first time. That was the beginning of the days of light as we know them. The bulk of the narrative of the Silmarillon is concerned with the centuries-long war in Middle-earth between the Elves (the exiled Noldor and the Teleri whom they met up with in Middle-earth, who weren't too happy to see them once they heard about the Kinslaying) and Morgoth and his hordes of Orcs. I won't belabor the details of these, but they concern many iconic scenes such as Fingolfin (Fëanor's half-brother) dueling Morgoth at his gate, Fëanor's death and his seven sons vowing to continue pursuing the Silmarils in service of their Oath, Morgoth capturing Fëanor's son Maedhros after a battle and pinning him to the face of a cliff by his hand until he was rescued by his cousin Fingon riding on the back of an eagle, and the coming of Men. A lot of the story concerns the languages of the Elves and which kindreds spoke them. When the show speaks of "Elvish", it is talking about either Quenya (the language of the High-elves, the Vanyar and Noldor, which you can think of like Latin) or Sindarin (the language of the Sindar, the Grey-elves, the portion of the Teleri who stayed behind in Middle-earth after crossing the Misty Mountains on the way west; with respect to Latin it is analogous to languages like Spanish or Romanian). Quenya names tend to be "sharper" and more precise, and Sindarin has a "softer" or more informal sound, developed over centuries of separation from Quenya. This is where you get name variations like the ever-popular Teleporno, the Quenya form of Celeborn. Many of the important figures in the Silmarillion and LotR are Sindar, including Legolas, his father Thranduil, the OG Elvenking Thingol who had actually seen the Trees on an early ambassador's visit and was thus the wisest and greatest of the Sindar, and many others. In the show Arondir seems to be one of these as well. Not all Elves are woodland creatures who live in trees; Thingol and Finrod (Galadriel's brother from the prologue of Episode 1) dug huge caves and lived underground, which can be linked to Celtic myths about faëries who live in mounds. (The nerdiest of Tolkien readers know that he was writing this whole mess as a synthetic mythological history of the British Isles, incorporating pre-Roman traditions and Anglo-Saxon/Old English linguistics and reimagining England and Ireland as the places where the Elves once dwelt until they "faded".) The Edain or Men (Humans) At the first rising of the Sun, in accordance with the third and most mysterious of Ilúvatar's musical themes from the Music of the Ainur, the fathers of Men awoke, also somewhere far to the east in Middle-earth; and they showed up while the Elves were busy already with their wars with Morgoth. The Men came into Beleriand (the western lands of Middle-earth where most of the Silmarillion takes place) in a variety of tribes and migrations over hundreds of years, and a few of their houses became friendly with the Elves and supported them in their fight against Morgoth. Other groups of Men were swayed to Morgoth's side, and a lot of the Silmarillion is about Men-on-Men warfare and rivalry as subplots of larger conflicts. (Note that while the Elves are associated with the stars, Men are associated with the Sun; this is why the ships of Númenor have huge sun motifs on their sails.) From the noble Houses of Men came figures such as: The fate-cursed Túrin Turambar who killed Glaurung, the first of the Dragons, but not before unknowingly marrying his long-lost sister who had amnesia from Glaurung's curse Beren, who fell in love with Thingol's daughter Lúthien, and to win her father's favor the two of them sought out a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown. On their quest they teamed up with Finrod, who fought a song-battle with Sauron, then a lieutenant of Morgoth in charge of an outpost watchtower full of werewolves, and was killed by him. They succeeded in sneaking into Morgoth's stronghold, wooing him to sleep, and stealing one of the Silmarils to bring back to Thingol, who passed it down to Beren and Lúthien's son Dior and then to his daughter Elwing, who was thus Halfelven (and also a Maia on her grandmother's side — that's right, Thingol married Melian who was a straight-up Maia) Tuor, who found his way to the hidden Elven kingdom of Gondolin, where a massive host of Elves under the king Turgon waited in secret to be called out at the last moment when their cover is finally blown and they stand a chance of overpowering Morgoth once and for all; he got together with the Elvish princess and had a son, Eärendil — another Halfelven But as great and heroic as all the deeds of Elves and Men were throughout the War, and as many victories as they achieved, the story of the Silmarillion is one of doom and decay; and Morgoth steadily and inexorably overcame all the Elven kingdoms and turned all but the three noble Houses of Men to his banner. At the end of the First Age, thus, when things were at their worst, and Gondolin had been uncovered and overthrown and Morgoth had all but overrun all of Beleriand, Eärendil and his wife Elwing took the Silmaril on a ship on a voyage to Valinor — off-limits to both Elves since the Kinslaying, and Men since always — and petitioned the Valar on behalf of both Kindreds for help against Morgoth. Due to this unprecendented act of courage and self-sacrifice, the Valar answered his prayer, and they fought the War of Wrath in which Morgoth was overthrown, Eärendil fought the dragon Ancalagon the Black in the skies and threw him down onto Morgoth's mountain fortress of Thangorodrim and shattered it, and all of Beleriand was crushed into the Sea. After this act, when the Valar went back overseas to Valinor and took Morgoth and a great many Elves back home with them (though many still remained, including some Noldor who while no longer banned and exiled due to the Oath and Kinslaying because the two remaining Silmarils had been lost in the aftermath of the war, still wanted to linger in mortal lands—their king in Middle-earth was Gil-galad), Eärendil was set in his ship to patrol the skies and the Door of Night through which Morgoth had been thrown, forever on guard against his return. His Silmaril can be seen to this day as the "evening star" Venus, and the namesake of Arwen Evenstar, the daughter of Elrond the son of Eärendil. After the overthrow of Morgoth, the Valar raised up the island of Númenor and gave it to the three Houses of Men who had aided the Elves in the war. Their first King was Elros, brother of Elrond. The Valar gave both of these Halfelven the choice to join either Elves or Men; Elrond chose Elves and immortality, and Elros chose Men and the kingship of Númenor. He lived for 500 years, and his royal line had similarly long lives, though none quite as long as him. Over the ~2500 years of the Second Age, the kingdom of Númenor gained power and status and technological advancement unheard-of in the ancient world, to the point where Tolkien made allusions to inventions such as steam engines and firearms. They became great shipbuilders and navigators and sailed frequently to Middle-earth (whose shores were now as they appear in the LotR maps, now that Beleriand had been sunk) to establish colonies and mainland realms. But they were forbidden from sailing westward to Valinor or to Tol Eressëa (the Lonely Isle, within sight of Valinor, where most of the Teleri had settled, still unwilling to go all the way). This Ban had predictable effects, as the Númenóreans gained more and more power, and of course wanted more and more; and they rankled at the Ban and sought to gain the eternal life that they saw the Elves as having and withholding from them somehow. (In their religion they were also closer to Ilúvatar directly than to the Valar, whom they saw as unfair and in the pocket of the Elves.) A schism arose, between the Faithful or Elf-friends (who lived in the west of the island) and the King's Men who saw the dominion of the world as their right. Over time the formerly common Quenya (as seen in the royal names of the Kings and Queens) was supplanted by names and speech in Adűnaic (the human language derived from the tongues of the early Edain), and speaking Quenya/Elvish was forbidden. At the time of the show, we are seeing the final days of the royal line of Elros, diminishing in lifespan as well as in wisdom, but increasing in power and arrogance. Tar-Míriel the Queen is the daughter of one of the last Kings, Tar-Palantir, who repented of the ways of the recent Kings who had turned away from the Valar, and was trying to rehabilitate the Faithful; but Pharazôn, her Chancellor and cousin, is one of the most ambitious and nationalistic men ever to have come up in Númenor. Elendil is a descendant of one of the branches of the royal house that stayed true to the Elves and had become the progenitors of the Faithful, and his noble standing keeps him close to the royal court despite his keeping his true allegiances hidden. He and his sons Anárion and Isildur enjoy some wealth and privilege but the Kings' Men are the ones who really hold the cards. The Dwarves Waaay back in the days before the Trees, when Arda was still being created, Aulë was envious of the Children of Ilúvatar — Elves and Men — and decided he wanted Children of his own. So he created Dwarves in his smithy. Ilúvatar saw what he was doing and admonished him for it, saying the Dwarves didn't have any free will of their own and were just soulless automatons, as Aulë had no agency for creating truly new life, just as Melkor could not create Orcs from whole cloth either. But Aulë pleaded for clemency, and at the same time offered to destroy his creation; and Ilúvatar granted life to the Dwarves, making them into a sentient race all of their own. But Ilúvatar didn't put them at the same level as Elves and Men; the Dwarves were set in caves to wake up only after the other Children had awakened, and they were not given any special blessings as were given to Elves (immortality and reincarnation within Arda) or Men (Death and ascension to eternal life with Ilúvatar). Nobody knows what happens when they die. Also, because Aulë's wife was Yavanna the Nature goddess, and she knew the Dwarves would be axe-wielders and would want to chop down all her trees to feed their furnaces, she created (or asked Ilúvatar to create) the Ents to act as the trees' shepherds. It seems these are not Maiar invited into Arda (as Tom Bombadil's origins are also not known), but another race given sentience by Ilúvatar during this episode with the Dwarves. The Dwarves are divided into seven Houses, the oldest of which is the Longbeards, whose progenitor is Durin. There have been several Durins in the millennia since Durin I, including the ones seen in the show at Elrond's visit and the founding of Fëanor's grandson Celebrimbor's forge in Eregion. Hobbits The Silmarillion makes hardly any mention of Hobbits or where they come from. It seems they are related to Men or a subset of Men, and follow the same rules as Men when it comes to death and the relationship with the world. Data Graham fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Oct 25, 2022 |
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Jul 14, 2022 16:09
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That's what I found on a cursory search, yeah
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Jul 14, 2022 16:16
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One thing we already know is that the timeline of the narrative will be compressed, such that events that should be separated by thousands of years (the forging of the Rings, the destruction of Númenor) will occur more or less at the same time. It's a really interesting narrative row to hoe — the story as written takes place over centuries, but it also stars characters who are immortal and keep reappearing throughout the timeline, so they might kindasorta be able to get away with it
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Jul 14, 2022 17:22
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I will say I really like the cityscapes and establishing shots. They look like a ridiculous amount of art went into them.
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Jul 14, 2022 17:38
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Gresh posted:I'm not feeling the way the Numenoreans look tbh. Like most of the costumes here just look look uninspired and even kinda cheap/campy The hell is that script on those ladies' dresses? Making up a whole new writing system in a Tolkien show is some kind of hubris (Also it would be hilarious if that was English, it would look like they're wearing giant mayor sashes)
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Jul 14, 2022 18:25
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WoodrowSkillson posted:Thats the book of Mormon. In the Silmarillion a large chunk of the bad humans are "swarthy" because they come from the east and south of middle earth, so areas analogous to the middle east and africa. Tolkien never claimed that dark skinned people are bad, he just set up his world so thats how it happened. I'm gonna quote this in the OP so we can hopefully stave off anybody kramering in to start the racism debate It's a fine discussion to have, I'd just like there to be some "we have already discussed the major points and reached a broad consensus of understanding  " ground rules
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Jul 14, 2022 18:30
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What are you hiding, Bigglesswë?
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Jul 14, 2022 18:56
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Hughmoris posted:Actually, those are swaffs. Part sword, part staff. Well now I feel foolish
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Jul 14, 2022 22:37
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Might be Anglachel/Anguirel? That's some pretty deep lore that has no direct impact on anything Second Age though.
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Jul 15, 2022 01:46
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Book: nobody has ever heard of mithril except weird loremasters and Dwarves Games: yeah mithril is the universal currency
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Jul 16, 2022 15:50
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I really like the landscapes/establishing shots fwiw. But then I also really liked them in the movies. They do seem to have a bit of a different vibe this time. More detailed, more explicit, less calendar-art, less dreamlike. Just a vague impression of course and I'm probably thinking of different images than others might be.
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Jul 17, 2022 19:05
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Mameluke posted:We're going to hear a lot of whinging about the Notion Club if that piece of criticism gets traction That Tolkien movie was surprisingly good, maybe there's something in an adaptation of all JRRT's literary buddies hallucinating about Numenor over ale at the Bird and Baby
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Jul 18, 2022 03:38
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fez_machine posted:Not likely. This adaptation is also expanding a relatively small amount of material into something that's larger than it can bare. Not that I'm disagreeing (the show could very well suck), but I would say that the nature of the insufficient-butter-spreading is way different this time. The Hobbit was small because it's a comedic children's book; the Appendices are small because they're a vague outline of thousands of years of political intrigue with hundreds of hinted-at characters. The Hobbit had to be fleshed out by adding dumb action scenes and love interests and pointless complications to an otherwise very straightforward story. With the Second Age they'll have to make up their own character dramas and plotlines, true, but there's a lot more framework to hang it on and a lot less central narrative, I think; it'll be a matter of interpolation rather than extrapolation.
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Jul 18, 2022 11:41
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It's kind of funny that WoT (the book) very heavily emphasizes its descriptive text on clothes and elaborate costumes and embroidery and physical appearances, whereas LotR is famously all about "landscapes". These promo stills look like if WoT fans made a Tolkien show
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Jul 18, 2022 15:02
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Just keep opening the book to a random location and read a page at a time
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Jul 19, 2022 20:30
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whoa
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Jul 21, 2022 20:13
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Your meter is abombadible 
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Jul 22, 2022 19:56
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It occurs to me, should we have to worry about book spoilers in this thread? Will anyone be watching this show who doesn’t more or less get the broad strokes of the story already?
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Jul 22, 2022 23:28
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I just hope it tells a good and compelling story. I don’t tell people to watch a TV show because “the costumes look really expensive”
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Aug 3, 2022 10:50
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I don't know if it counts as nitpicking or if nitpicking is justified in this if nothing else, but It uhhhh kinda sounded like she said Sauron like "dinosaur" If Jackson had not gotten all the pronunciations right I would esteem the movies about 1/10th as highly
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Aug 5, 2022 12:41
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Nope, Isen is an English word (archaic root of Iron). It doesn’t follow the sensible rules of the synthetic languages. I made the same assumption on first reading and had to train myself out of it.
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Aug 6, 2022 02:24
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webmeister posted:Others might not be old enough to remember, but there was an awful lot of similar dumb kneejerk sight-unseen criticism of the Jackson movies ~20 years ago as well. *collectible figurines appear on shelves in advance of the movie* WTF WHO IS “LURTZ” THEY ARE ADDING A TOKEN ORC TO THE FELLOWSHIP
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Aug 7, 2022 18:09
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I don't want to say I'm underwhelmed or unexcited or anything until I'm actually watching the show, but my biggest concern is just that — well, there's a reason why the Second Age was never made into an immersive on-the-ground narrative, notably not by Tolkien himself. It's no great inspirational leap to be like "hmmm well maybe we could make Elendil and Ar-Pharazôn and Sauron into cool wisecracking characters and make it a gripping personal drama", that's the kind of thing I wanted to write fanfic about when I was 14 Ultimately yeah they can do that, but these aren't characters who were designed in the first place to be "characters" in that sense. They're historical figures, and humanizing them is the same kind of task in front of a person who wants to humanize someone like Jefferson or Rurik or Oliver Cromwell. It can be done, and done very well, for sure. But it also means either you're going to put modern language into their mouths for a modern audience, or you're going to try to ape Tolkien's language and you're all but guaranteed to do a really awful job at it if you pick the latter. Jackson's screenwriters got the "voice" pretty good and I think a lot of that is because they "got" the Hobbit-cadence, and they "got" that that was the register the whole narrative should be cast in. LotR is an everyman's story seen through a layperson's eyes, and when someone formal starts talking all forsoothly it's presented as alien and stilted and weird, as something the hobbits are as uncomfortable with as the audience is. But when we're dealing with Second Age stuff, the temptation is to try to take all these weighty pronouncements that are only alluded to poetically in the extant text and make out like that's just how everyone talks. That's going to feel really awkward unless they can develop a unique and immersive and idiosyncratic voice that makes you fascinated with the unrevealed mysteries of the world, like the creators of shows like Severance and Star Trek and all the various dramas and comedies that all have their own unique voices do. And if all they're going to be able to do is have serious-looking people speaking in portentous RP tones about prophecies and great danger and stuff like that, ultimately it's going to seem like unimaginative fanfic at best. But what else can they do? Trying to put their own spin on it means flying in the face of what text there is, and it's bound to make someone mad no matter what. I don't know what I'm trying to say, just that it's really hard to think what I'm looking forward to seeing. I do want more Second Age stories, sure. I just don't know that I want them from someone who isn't JRRT and doesn't know what he really had in mind. Data Graham fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 8, 2022 |
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Aug 8, 2022 13:54
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Some unauthorized LotR translation: "Ringleader" picture on cover of Sauron as P.T. Barnum
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Aug 8, 2022 19:41
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Rankin-Bass would have made a banger of a Silmarillion
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Aug 12, 2022 00:38
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I hope there’s a reason for the aqueduct system feeding a 300-foot waterfall in the middle of the city other than “it looks cool”
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Aug 12, 2022 11:35
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I mean I'm really digging the look of these, especially that third one. Very Ted Nasmith kind of feel to it. I love how the city is built up onto vertical cliff faces like the Amalfi coast. Also the sun motifs. That's pretty on-brand. The second shot is really getting me going though. It's rare to get a feeling from Tolkien of a world that's really, truly populated, densely packed with just normal people with a culture that seems normal to them, going about their daily lives, doing their jobs. In LotR times it's because everything is depopulated, but there's no excuse not to see it in Numenor. e: ooh and someone had fun painting that frieze on the aqueduct/waterfall thing. Every king/queen going back to Elros? What do they do every 200 years, repaint it? Data Graham fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 12, 2022 16:26
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Imagine what those rock formations would have looked like before some stonemasons cut away everything that didn't look like a pair of dudes e: 
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Aug 15, 2022 01:27
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Fittingly, I just got to the recent Exploring the Lord of the Rings episode where Olsen goes off on a tangent about adaptations and about how everyone is always terrified that some upcoming iteration will be terrible and will "ruin" the original work. i.e. it happened with Jackson (I recall the trepidation with which we all awaited news and clues in the run-up to 2001), and one of the listeners said he remembered it happening with Bakshi. The Hobbit movies were of course godawful. And yet here we all still are.
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Aug 18, 2022 11:33
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Maybe if they give Orodruin huge cleavage
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Aug 18, 2022 15:06
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I mean even that awful "Invasion" show had Sam Neill in its first episode
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Aug 20, 2022 14:56
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Maybe what I've been having trouble putting my finger on is that the show is what "the wider world" will get as their first introduction to what Tolkien nerds always mysteriously allude to being "the deeper lore", the stuff that people who only know the movies all are assumed to have missed out on, what the lifelong acolytes have always maintained is "the real story" without any desire or mechanism to go into detail beyond just a vague  look.And if the show sucks, it will make all the nerds look like idiots because everyone will assume "this is what you were on about all this time??"
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Aug 20, 2022 19:40
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Also the star of the one and only singular horny scene in all of Tolkien. Which itself is worded so clinically and off-puttingly that it leaves no uncertainty as to how he felt about the whole idea
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Aug 24, 2022 13:34
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It's a really unique challenge for a TV show to attempt. The material is not a "story" so much as a historical chronicle. Nerds have spent decades obsessing over the historical chronicle aspects of it, because it's nerdy by nature, but that's not how TV works. If they want to make a TV show out of it, they'll have to do something that's inherently different from what nerds like about it. They'll have to turn it into a "story". It's natural that we nerds are unsure about what the show thinks it's doing, or whether the story will be engaging or Tolkien-like or will find an audience or anything. It's all brand-new territory. But the one thing we know they can't do is "just film the book" because in this case, way more than with LotR or even the Silmarillion, there's hardly any book to film. Literally all they have that ties it to what we are familiar with is epic establishing shots and greatest-hits characters in cool costumes. It's like trying to write a text in Quenya when all you have is lots of nouns, a few adjectives, and almost zero verbs. We've all been burned by Foundation, but that was kind of a different problem to solve. That show just made some dumb narrative decisions that didn't pan out. It was a similarly "unfilmable" story, but there was a lot more narrative and character to base things on. I'd also put it on a spectrum with Brokeback Mountain, a 3-hour movie based on a 20-page short story. But in that case it was all character and a really heart-wrenching narrative, so there was plenty for a filmmaker to sink his teeth into and expand it out. This is something new again.
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Aug 24, 2022 14:31
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You'd think they'd be running ads like "HEY GUYS IT'S A CROSSOVER OF LOTR AND ATLANTIS  "
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Aug 25, 2022 11:38
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It didn't really click for me until going through some of the deep-dives of the History of Middle-earth stuff that the Gift of Men being Death was supposed to be seen not just as a bad misinterpretation by Men that "release from the world is a great relief that we Elves yearn for", but more directly a promotion to an afterlife with Eru. Elves don't get that, no matter how long they live; their life is "only" the life of Arda itself, which is just a tiny bubble in the infinity of time that is oneness with Eru. Elves and Arda will both one day be so long gone as to no longer even be remembered by Men in their own afterlife, which is so far beyond Elves' "immortality" as to not bear comparison. Ar-Pharazôn's hubris isn't just in thinking Men are hard done by and wanting to live a bit longer than 200 years. It's failing to understand the nature of the Gift and just how incredibly vast in scope it is, and what a drat rear end in a top hat he is for thinking it isn't enough. Treating the Gift of Men like some kind of booby prize. (Also it's kind of interesting to think that there is basically no concept of any kind of Hell in Tolkien's world. There's either oneness with Eru, or nothingness. Kind of Jewish in concept if I understand it right. Well, and being stuck out in the Void if you're Morgoth) Anyway i made this 
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Aug 31, 2022 11:49
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Dying at those names
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Sep 1, 2022 03:44
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Bad news about the Silmarillion lol
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Sep 1, 2022 20:18
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I watched the trailer and it put me into episode 1 Let's do this poo poo
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Sep 2, 2022 02:06
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 10:21 |
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I disagree I think it was really good (I will save Ep. 2 for tomorrow)
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Sep 2, 2022 03:10
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