Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[DarkAmbient]

So basically arguing about if it's 1000 years or 3000 years doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.

It matters in terms of the timeline. Galadriel being 5000 years old and unmarried at the time of the forging of the rings wouldn't make sense, for example. But in terms of Galadriel's mental maturity, not really.

[Kumorii]

It matters in terms of the timeline. Galadriel being 5000 years old and unmarried at the time of the forging of the rings wouldn't make sense, for example. But in terms of Galadriel's mental maturity, not really.

oh yeah, for sure... just brought it up because I've seen people use the "she's actually 2000 or 1000 years old" as a counter to people claiming she acts weirdly for being 3000 years old.
Maybe I jumped in after that had been settled though.

[Kumorii]

I'd argue the general age does matter, because even for a character who is 8000+ years old when she goes home, she doesn't just mature at say 1000 and go through zero changes in the next 7000 years. Galadriel from this point through to LotR goes through plenty of change. The character at those 2 ages are very different people.

Hell, humans live a whopping 100 years if we're lucky and we go through all kinds of changes mentally. You could probably say we're a condensed version of the elvish life lol The only difference is scale.

Don't think anyone has made the argument there shouldn't be growth or change in the character over time throughout the show and it's supposedly 5 seasons.

[rogoth]

So, I've only lightly skimmed this thread to catch up since the last banning, because who the heck has time for this utter nonsense, but it still seems to be the same people arguing about the exact same stuff. What baffles me the most is how people that claim to be such big Tolkien fans complain like they've never actually read a book before. Who in their right mind expects every answer within the first 2/3 parts of a story? People like this do not read books like LotR.

How can people not understand the (actually quite simple) basis for how Galadriel behaves? Shouldn't someone so versed in Tolkien know the why she does? Hell, she's actually acted quite well when you have the capacity to understand her behaviour. Though there was one guy that seemed to understand that behaviour, but was still somehow unable to see the effect in the acting lol Why do people expect her to already be what we know she needs a long, looong fucking time to become? Without trying to really put people down, I genuinely think some people just don't have the ability to actually understand basic things like a character's motivation.

People bitch and moan about how poorly written this all is, and how poorly acted it all is, but they still seem to simply not get basic things. How long was wasted talking about the first 15 or so minutes (because that's all one guy has actually seen, but still...) when it was all incredibly blatant in what it was portraying and what the character's motivations were? Or taking Galadriel starting to swim and just assuming she knew she could swim however many miles it would have been, no thought given to the simple answer of "she's swimming because its better for her to move and hope to be rescued or reach any small bit of land than just stay there floating and doing fuck all, waiting to get eaten." Seriously, have some of you never read anything, or even watched anything, before? Instead, we get people that clearly should have moved on from this series they hate so much waffling on about "agenda," "tokenism," "intersectional feminism," and critical race theory of all things, as if these things are actual arguments. As for "woke," which even the folks that like to be overly verbose in attempts to appear intelligent and reasoned use incorrectly (I'm sure this line will be used to try attack me since this post is long and calls people out ), literally everyone should be woke. Do you guys even know what it actually means?

Does RoP have issues? Absolutely. But they, mostly, don't actually seem to be what a lot of the complaining has been about. The dialogue, to me, is pretentious enough to be Tolkienesque. The acting is actually good (yes, even Galadriel), not including some accents, perhaps. The overall writing has also been ok, so far. It could be edited together a little better. And while I had no issue with it, I don't think we need shots like the Galadriel on horseback one. Though I do understand what it was there to show. Again, something quite obvious that so many seem to have not understood.

Episode 3 gave us a beautiful Númenor and some of its population that we'd expect to see. I'm glad Elendil was given to a good British actor. Halbrand is absolutely Sauron and you should expect to see that reveal at the end of the season, imo. Episode 3 made it far too obvious lol I look forward to seeing what they do with the new bad guy they introduced at the end of the episode.

here's the list of every major piece of criticism i have with this show, i want you to explain to me using evidence exclusively from the show and the source material that amazon has access to, how it may be wrong:

> the volume of Tokenism is astonishing, they have rewritten established characters in both the way they look to their mannerisms and behaviours to the point they are entirely different people that just happen to share the same name.

> expanding on the above, they have a single token black dwarf in a colony of exclusively so far white dwarves, they have a single token black elf from a line of elves that ceased to exist during this time period of middle earth, living in a colony of people who are almost exclusively white with no backstory as to his origins and no actual reasoning for why these characters magically exist in an exclusively white homogenous group of people.

> the people they have cast in leading roles are not only wholly unfit for the roles they have been given, either as a result of their appearance or how they act the characters out, none are as egregious as the elven characters where the dwarves behave like you would expect dwarves to, and men behave like the Tolkienian depiction of the mannish tribes, the elves in this show are so far removed from what elves are described as looking like and acting like it's nauseating to watch.

> the absolute moronic decision to flip flop between moments in time, having time periods conflated together, having events that happen thousands of years in the future occur at the start of the second age, having named characters alive during time periods they either weren't born, or were long since dead, not to mention characters being placed into locations they never actually went and characters interacting together despite never ever meeting one another.

> writing in events that never happened, with characters that exist in the lore but were never there, all for the apparent sake of having some name recognition to somehow loosely tie people watching to the story somehow.

> the massive inconsistencies with regards to the costumes and sets used, some of them are very nice and look well done, some are extremely off putting and look completely out of place, as well as not really being flattering for the person wearing the costumes, not to mention the unnatural cleanliness of some characters where they shouldn't be, and the apparent lack of any actual reference to the source material when constructing these costumes as they do not reflect nor resemble anything described in the source material.

> the inane babble that the characters on screen seem to want to use to fill time because there's literally nothing going on to actually fill that time, and using wording or phrases that make zero sense in any fathomable universe all in the name of making it sound like something Tolkien would write.

i have more but these are my main gripes so far, i eagerly await your attempt to hand wave them away like you have done persistently already instead of actually explaining why the valid criticisms i and others have, are not valid, with the general sentiment being 'it's a good show, just trust me bro'.

[Kumorii]

There have been a few people arguing Galadriel should be her wise, incredible self, using how she is in LotR as the standard. It is planned to be 5 seasons, but some folks seem to think they need all development and answers now.

That's not the same as saying there should be no growth.
You can actually have her to be as wise as she's supposed to be when she is the wisest... and have her grow in other areas of personality.
Not saying that would be better... I just think they shouldn't make her so childish, considering how old she is.

[Smallfruitbat]

lol funny you say that - that's what the showrunners have said they're doing.

Like they even went so far as to say "Sauron will be a surprise, you won't think it is him at first."

Well, anyone who has Googled "Sauron" or has a lick of LotR knowledge knows he's like Satan - he will look beautiful if need-be.

Mystery solved "Galadriel" is actually Sauron in disguise.

[bledgor]

Yes, she should be at least 1200-ish years old, but well under 3000 years old, closer to 2000, according to Tolkien and depending on where exactly we are in the SA in RoP.

However, I don't think people expect her to be perfect. I think they just expect characters to display the qualities given them by Tolkien, a not unreasonable expectation. For example, she was known from a young age to have a "marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others", another reason why Halbrad being Sauron would be facepalm worthy.

Following Tolkien lore/logic she would have to be roughly 4000-5000 years old, as she lived ~1400 years in the age of the trees (remember that in the year of the trees they tracked time different than later ages, at a scale of roughly 10 to 1), ~600 years in the 1st age, and then we have the 2nd age lasting ~3500 years.

Considering we have Isildur alive, a man who lived ~200 years, and his and many others actions lead to the end of the 2nd age with the defeat of Sauron, we can roughly tell we are at the end of the 2nd age, putting her at least in the 4000 if not 5000 range.

Now the show is doing whatever the fuck they want, so in theory she can be 100's of years old, cause they don't give a single fuck about lore. Galadriel SHOULD be wise/knowledge still at this point, as she is one of the eldest of the eldar, older than even high king Gil-Galad, but again Amazon is doing their own lore independent show so who knows.

Note:

My issue with Galadriel is largely because she is SO FUCKING FAR from her character in LoTR. I Would have been fine with her being wise but not the wisest/most knowledge, showing some flaws, but what we get instead is this brash almost idiotic Galadriel who thinks everyone is beneath her and for example refuses to even act the slightest bit civil the Numenoreans who saved her and from whom she needs help. Having her SO FAR is the big issue (and also the removal of Celeborn/Celebrian, who again should be all around especially since Isildur is alive and the 3rd age is quickly approaching, need Elronds wife in order to have Arwen at the least, but I guess they will change his wife too).

I have already posted how they could have made the fight with the troll a bit different to show her inexperience while show casing a better leader as one such example of potential growth. You could easily her growth come from being a more self focused character (what can I do in the situations, how can I fix x/y/z) to a more leader focused situation (what can WE do, do I have people capable of solving this, who is the best for this situation).

You REALLY want to show flaw without directly contradicting Tolkien, have Galadriel befriend a human, and have that human turn into one of the ring wraiths. This can lead to a Galadriel who is more detached as when she let her emotions guide her in this story it lead her to incidentally helping to create one of the ring wraiths. Also could use it to explain why she doesn't directly intervene much anymore, as her intervention last time pushed someone into being a ring wraith, even if indirectly.

[bullseyed]

Did Tolkien ever elaborate on the intricacies of elven swimming capabilities? As a person/race that was able to go on a never-ending hunt for centuries, I'd imagine they have quite impressive levels of stamina. Perhaps you could enlighten me.

Obvious troll, given how all of your comments center around how everything in the show is supported by Tolkien's work with no citations but...


There is no reference of Tolkien elves knowing how to swim. An early draft of the Silmarillion featured mermaids teaching one half-elf to swim, while a pure elf failed to learn. Elves often sit, stand and walk near water, yet there is no reference of any elf ever swimming in thousands of pages of stories.

TLDR: Tolkien elves can't swim.

[Kumorii]

Galadriel can just swim to Middle-Earth tbh, she doesn't need Númenors help.

[bullseyed]

One could argue that the author of one of the best-selling book series of all time, translated into 50 different languages would have, in fact, a lot of fans.

This narrative on the other hand that people that give it low scores are trolls though, doesn't hold up to scrutiny very well when you put a meager amount of thought into it.

Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. In this case and to put it bluntly, the show is just bad. There's no conspiracy.

The Jackson movie trilogy was OK and had the most possible deviation from source that could be done while still creating an "acceptable" product.

The Hobbit trilogy was bad.

The Amazon show is worse.

[rhorle]

There is no reference of Tolkien elves knowing how to swim. An early draft of the Silmarillion featured mermaids teaching one half-elf to swim, while a pure elf failed to learn. Elves often sit, stand and walk near water, yet there is no reference of any elf ever swimming in thousands of pages of stories. TLDR: Tolkien elves can't swim.

The Unfinished tales has a story of an elf named Amroth that swam "off into the distance". There is also the Teleri that were taught everything about the Sea by Osse. Swimming is implied. The obvious counter to your argument is how many bathroom breaks does Tolkien write about?

[Dhrizzle]

Following Tolkien lore/logic she would have to be roughly 4000-5000 years old, as she lived ~1400 years in the age of the trees (remember that in the year of the trees they tracked time different than later ages, at a scale of roughly 10 to 1), ~600 years in the 1st age, and then we have the 2nd age lasting ~3500 years.

Considering we have Isildur alive, a man who lived ~200 years, and his and many others actions lead to the end of the 2nd age with the defeat of Sauron, we can roughly tell we are at the end of the 2nd age, putting her at least in the 4000 if not 5000 range.

Now the show is doing whatever the fuck they want, so in theory she can be 100 years old, cause they don't give a single fuck about lore. Galadriel SHOULD be wise/knowledge still at this point, as she is one of the eldest of the eldar, older than even high king Gil-Galad, but again Amazon is doing their own lore independent show so who knows.

In a couple of schemes that Tolkien worked out he stated that Galadriel would be 2,880 Sun-years old when she went East to Middle-earth which equates to her being 20 "Life-years" (Elves aged 1 life year for every 144 Sun-years in Aman, this shortened to 100 Sun-years in Middle-earth) which he called just coming "of age." She would be what he termed "full grown" at LY 24 (a couple of centuries into the First Age) and then entering her "Years of Youth." At the start of the Second Age he said she would be 28 LY which he called Mortal Equivalent 21.

After that it gets hairy as he uses different ageing schemes and mixes the terms "maturity" and "youth" a fair bit. However what is clear is she began the Second Age as a young adult and had a long way to go before she would become the Lady of Lothlorien we meet in LotR. Rings of Power is likely going to cover the key events that mark that transition with her receiving Nenya (and the subsequent increase in longing for the West) being one of the most important.

[bledgor]

In a couple of schemes that Tolkien worked out he stated that Galadriel would be 2,880 Sun-years old when she went East to Middle-earth which equates to her being 20 "Life-years" (Elves aged 1 life year for every 144 Sun-years in Aman, this shortened to 100 Sun-years in Middle-earth) which he called just coming "of age." She would be what he termed "full grown" at LY 24 (a couple of centuries into the First Age) and then entering her "Years of Youth." At the start of the Second Age he said she would be 28 LY which he called Mortal Equivalent 21.

After that it gets hairy as he uses different ageing schemes and mixes the terms "maturity" and "youth" a fair bit. However what is clear is she began the Second Age as a young adult and had a long way to go before she would become the Lady of Lothlorien we meet in LotR. Rings of Power is likely going to cover the key events that mark that transition with her receiving Nenya (and the subsequent increase in longing for the West) being one of the most important.

Cool, she still remains one of the eldest of the elves, and unless the plan is to make her COMPLETELY different at the end of the show compared to the beginning she should at least show SOME wisdom, but in the show she basically has none. By your logic Gil-Galad would be roughly 25-27 LY old, the mortal equivalent of 20 yet he has more wisdom and is high king.

You guys ignore other elves exist and how they behave when you try to point out anything Galadriel related. Not to mention I also used numbers from the lore, which are the years Tolkien described. My numbers are also still back by what is in the Silmarillion, at the start of the 2nd age Galadriel was 2000 years old roughly, so minimally she was one of the eldest Eldar. Stop making bullshit excuses for Amazons bad adaptation. They don't need your help they are already buying a ton of it.

Also saying "mortal equivalent" is such bullshit, Elves are considering mature enough to marry at 50 mortal years (Elven age of .5 years old using the numbers). They don't age/act like they need 100 more years to grow into an equivalent stage as humans. Not to mention she has already lived through the fall of the trees, the kinslaying, oath of Faenor, journey to middle earth and so much at this point to deny she would have obtained at LEAST SOME WISDOM, but the show displays none of that. This isn't even touching the lack of her being married or a mother at this point.

[tikcol]

Cool, she still remains one of the eldest of the elves, and unless the plan is to make her COMPLETELY different at the end of the show compared to the beginning she should at least show SOME wisdom, but in the show she basically has none. By your logic Gil-Galad would be roughly 25-27 LY old, the mortal equivalent of 20 yet he has more wisdom and is high king.

You guys ignore other elves exist and how they behave when you try to point out anything Galadriel related. Not to mention I also used numbers from the lore, which are the years Tolkien described. My numbers are also still back by what is in the Silmarillion, at the start of the 2nd age Galadriel was 2000 years old roughly, so minimally she was one of the eldest Eldar. Stop making bullshit excuses for Amazons bad adaptation. They don't need your help they are already buying a ton of it.

Also saying "mortal equivalent" is such bullshit, Elves are considering mature enough to marry at 50 mortal years (Elven age of .5 years old using the numbers). They don't age/act like they need 100 more years to grow into an equivalent stage as humans. Not to mention she has already lived through the fall of the trees, the kinslaying, oath of Faenor, journey to middle earth and so much at this point to deny she would have obtained at LEAST SOME WISDOM, but the show displays none of that. This isn't even touching the lack of her being married or a mother at this point.

Some posters need to choose. You either care about the lore or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose when it's convenient.

Let's put to rest the notion that there's any excuse for Galadriel to behave like a brat by the 2nd age.

Fëanor and Galadriel were always unfriends, both being the greatest Eldar in Valinor; and if Fëanor was greater than her, she was wiser, and her wisdom grew with the long years. For she also had an outstanding gift to see into the minds of others, and she hated and feared the darkness in Fëanor

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Also

About the year 1200, Sauron came in disguise to Eriador, but he was only welcomed in Eregion by Celebrimbor and the Elven-smiths, who were interested in his advice on craftsmanship.[30]:236 Galadriel was not deceived, and rejected him, saying that he was not in the training of Aulë as he claimed

If they put Sauron anywhere near Galadriel during the show and she's fooled, it's yet another cheap plot twist that spits on Galadriel as a character.

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Very much this. No author writes about literally every possible thing a character can or might do.

If we honestly can't agree that her jumping off the ship where she did was extremely idiotic, I don't think we'll ever agree on anything. The fact that this thread is now discussing whether or not Elfs can or can't swim kinda proves it. The argument has been reduced to absurdity lol

[InfiniteCharger]

If we honestly can't agree that her jumping off the ship where she did was extremely idiotic, I don't think we'll ever agree on anything. The fact that this thread is now discussing whether or not Elfs can or can't swim kinda proves it. The argument has been reduced to absurdity lol

If elves were such great swimmers, why do they need boats? But beyond that why not show them doing some kind of swimming in the flashback as some sort of 'coming of age' narrative and character development? Then her swimming could have more resonance in the overall story of her narrative. But even that doesn't fix the fact that the narrative of her winding up on the raft and then going to Numenor under circumstances beyond her control totally removes any and all agency from the character. Agency would have been her realizing at some point that she needed to go to Numenor to decipher the mark she discovered vs just winding up there just by literal accident. Not to mention it is never shown where she was swimming to in the first place which just isn't a narrative, versus a sequence of events that just happen.

[tikcol]

If elves were such great swimmers, why do they need boats? But beyond that why not show them doing some kind of swimming in the flashback as some sort of 'coming of age' narrative and character development? Then her swimming could have more resonance in the overall story of her narrative. But even that doesn't fix the fact that the narrative of her winding up on the raft and then going to Numenor under circumstances beyond her control totally removes any and all agency from the character. Agency would have been her realizing at some point that she needed to go to Numenor to decipher the mark she discovered vs just winding up there just by literal accident. Not to mention it is never shown where she was swimming to in the first place which just isn't a narrative, versus a sequence of events that just happen.

Those scenes were just blatantly dumb. They could have done it in so many different ways and they chose the worst. Especially since we know Galadriel at that point just didn't want to return, she wanted a realm of her own.

They could have made her simply escort the other elves to the harbor, or watching the other elves get killed by an ambush to reinforce her desire for vengeance. Instead they sent her miles into the ocean for a swim so she could meet whoever that dude actually is and get picked up by the Numenorean navy

Getting ordered like a girl-scout to return to base wasn't the best of ideas.

[Triceron]

The Unfinished tales has a story of an elf named Amroth that swam "off into the distance". There is also the Teleri that were taught everything about the Sea by Osse. Swimming is implied. The obvious counter to your argument is how many bathroom breaks does Tolkien write about?

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Amroth

This guy?

At dawn of the following morning, the storm dissipated. However, when Amroth awoke, he saw that the ship was already far from its port. Full of despair, Amroth screamed Nimrodel's name, threw himself into the water below and drowned.

[tikcol]

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Amroth

This guy?

At dawn of the following morning, the storm dissipated. However, when Amroth awoke, he saw that the ship was already far from its port. Full of despair, Amroth screamed Nimrodel's name, threw himself into the water below and drowned.

I swear some of these posters do some random google searches for the topics being discussed like "lotr elf swim" and copy/paste the first thing they find into this board without any regard or knowledge about what they're doing

[Gumble]

Hey, it could be worse.

You could have had a couple of untrained magic users decimate the a huge army of Orcs with magic they were never taught or had the ability to use, die in the process, and then be magically revived because someone felt bad, utterly removing any stakes or logic from the show from that point on.

/goes off to grumble about WoT..............

[rhorle]

This guy?

“The mariners with their Elvish sight for a long time could see him battling with the waves, until the rising sun gleamed through the clouds and far off lit his bright hair like a spark of gold. No eyes of Elves or Men ever saw him again in Middle- earth.”

If you take the text from the source it implies that he swam until no one could see him anymore and then drowned because he was never seen from again. It implies that elves are capable of swimming and won't drown as soon as the depth is greater than their height. I'm not even sure what you are trying to argue because the point isn't that elves can't drown but that elves can swim.

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I swear some of these posters do some random google searches for the topics being discussed like "lotr elf swim" and copy paste the first thing they see here without any regard or knowledge about what they're doing

Lmao. Are you that eager to insult people that don't agree with your view point? Here is the text that implies he had the ability to swim far enough to go out of sight of watchers: “The mariners with their Elvish sight for a long time could see him battling with the waves, until the rising sun gleamed through the clouds and far off lit his bright hair like a spark of gold. No eyes of Elves or Men ever saw him again in Middle- earth.”