Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Dhrizzle]

I always wondered if there was a breaking point for Tolkien when half-elves stop being.... half elves. Elrond is probably about 3/5-4/5 elf. I can't remember if it's his mother's or father's side, but one is almost completely mixed. Speaking of Arwen though, she is likely at least 7/8 elf, and that 1/8 man is straight up Edain, which are as close to mortal elves (angelic men) as Tolkien will give you.
I don't know why but the half-elven moniker kind of always struck me wrong, just because the connotation is half man and "Man" doesn't even really exist on Middle Earth until about mid second age. The Edain were ascendant beings compared to man, they were already taller, stronger, wiser, and longer lived than what man actually became and this was before they were granted the blessing and became numernorians.

They were still Men though, the principle difference being Elves' fëar are bound to Arda until its ending and Men's fëar pass through the Halls of Mandos to a fate unknown. There is no fractions of Elven heritage like that, you're either an Elf, a Man or a mix of the two who gets to choose the final fate of their fëa.

[Biomega]

Jackson's LotR movies were all spectacle.

But they weren't JUST spectacle.

I'm not saying NO spectacle, I'm saying no spectacle OVER OTHER THINGS.

[Dhrizzle]

That isn't what "agenda" means. Having a side kick character isn't something that is bad or pushing an agenda. I'm not sure what answer I expected but it certainly wasn't that a character having friends is bad lmao. Also wouldn't it be a throwback to the OG and not Jackson?

You're using the wrong logic. If you've been told "agendas are bad" and "Rings of Power is bad" then obviously you're going to complain about all the agendas (bad things) in the series (bad thing.) Remember it's 2022 where people value their feelings about words more than their meanings.

- - - Updated - - -

Half the show is trying to reference things from the LoTR. The characters are pretty obvious (female Frodo and Sam, Halbrand is a "King" who was deprived of his Kingdom aka Aragorn, you have Arondri/Legolas, meteor man/wizard/Gandalf, and Gimli in Durin IV/elf friend, just missing 2 Harfoots and Boromir to pick up the whole gang), but there are a few less obvious ones. The shape of the capital of Numenor has the protruding white spine like Minas Tirith (I get that it was constructed by the same people, but the exact same shape is 100% to get people thinking of Minas Tirith), the line about not kneeling by Mirial made me think of Return of the King and Aragorns line to the hobbits, the Elven Fireworks was a callback to Gandalf (I mean really why would Elfs have fireworks, very much a wizard thing), the Elven leader of Arondir getting shot by two orc arrows mirrored Boromirs death, and I'm sure a lot more references back to the trilogy that I missed/didn't write.

You can tell they wanted to get as many ways to connect to the movies through easter eggs while avoiding doing things in the characters/plot that connected like any normal person would. *sigh*

If you want to utterly reduce the Fellowship down to the race of its members and completely ignore their characters, ignore the fact the people you mention are scattered across the world and ignore everything else going on then yeah it's just like the Fellowship; but that's an awful lot of mental gymnastics just to make a poor point.

- - - Updated - - -

We do know how humans came to be so varied, and the idea that ethnic isolation and group homogeny is a natural and historically accurate way for populations to evolve (which must in turn be applied to fantasy races) is simply an ignorance on your part on the subject of human evolution and history.

Nope, stop right there. Scientification of his fantasy was definitely something Tolkien didn't like. Elves and Men didn't have evolutionary history, they awoke fully formed at a time appointed by Illuvatar. For the Elves decent account(s) exist of these early days but for Men it's left a mystery, though almost certainly they would have come under some sort of influence of Morgoth or Sauron from which they gained their dread of death (and for some a belief they were supposed to be immortal like the Elves.)

- - - Updated - - -

But they weren't JUST spectacle.

I'm not saying NO spectacle, I'm saying no spectacle OVER OTHER THINGS.

Well no, they were also massive distortions of the book characters to provide comedy or emotional impact.

[s_bushido]

I'm not saying NO spectacle, I'm saying no spectacle OVER OTHER THINGS.

If people could snap their fingers and do that, we wouldn't have to put up with the shit Michael Bay and Zack Snyder churn out. But writing good stories, getting good performances out of your actors, and compiling/editing down all the footage into a cohesive product (the actual hard stuff about making these sorts of shows/movies) isn't really something you can just throw money at.

[Dhrizzle]

Jackson's LotR movies were all spectacle. It literally opens with "epic battle narrated by epic voiceover."

The biggest problem with the Hobbit movies seems to have been that they were given too much leeway as a result of the massive success of the first trilogy. By this logic, no one should have supported those first movies, so we wouldn't have wound up with the disappointing ones that came after...

The biggest problem with the Hobbit movies is they tried to make a trilogy as big as LotR using about a sixth of the material.

[s_bushido]

The biggest problem with the Hobbit movies is they tried to make a trilogy as big as LotR using about a sixth of the material.

Yeah, but that's part of the "too much leeway." Someone just probably needed to tell them no, at some point...

[Logwyn]

I always wondered if there was a breaking point for Tolkien when half-elves stop being.... half elves. Elrond is probably about 3/5-4/5 elf. I can't remember if it's his mother's or father's side, but one is almost completely mixed. Speaking of Arwen though, she is likely at least 7/8 elf, and that 1/8 man is straight up Edain, which are as close to mortal elves (angelic men) as Tolkien will give you.
I don't know why but the half-elven moniker kind of always struck me wrong, just because the connotation is half man and "Man" doesn't even really exist on Middle Earth until about mid second age. The Edain were ascendant beings compared to man, they were already taller, stronger, wiser, and longer lived than what man actually became and this was before they were granted the blessing and became numernorians.

I am sure that sort of thing is confusing and I guess really Arwen is 1/4 elf? I think the biggest thing with Half-Elf is they get to choose to be immortal or become mortal.

- - - Updated - - -

Its one of those grey areas (and as far as elf-human relationships iirc Tolkien considers it as such) since technically she had the choice to be elf/immortal but with choosing Aragon she choose to be mortal. Also technically she was 3/4's Elvish, since Elrond is half and Celebrian was Elven.

True enough!

[Biomega]

If people could snap their fingers and do that, we wouldn't have to put up with the shit Michael Bay and Zack Snyder churn out. But writing good stories, getting good performances out of your actors, and compiling/editing down all the footage into a cohesive product (the actual hard stuff about making these sorts of shows/movies) isn't really something you can just throw money at.

You can, but that's not what the money people want. That's the problem.

You say we "put up" with Bay, Snyder & Co. - but the reality is, that shit SELLS. That's my point. Fast & Furious films and such ilk are about as close as you get to intellectual torture, but the reality is that they are absolute money printing machines. BECAUSE they're dumb, not in spite of it. There's massive audiences out there who actively don't WANT complex, sophisticated narratives. They just want to see shit blow up, and the audience at large is segmented along lines of various degrees of that.

It's not that they just can't make those good stories or that "throwing money" at the problem wouldn't solve it; it's that nobody wants to do that, because why would they if you can make so much MORE money making dumb shit.

How many of the highest-grossing movies had actual good writing? Not just "not shit" level, but sophisticated, engaging writing. That's my point. A lot of those films only had GOOD ENOUGH writing to pair with the spectacle part well enough to broaden their appeal sufficiently. But by and large, they're not exactly good writing in the abstract. And sometimes they're phenomenally successful even with really, really bad writing (see Avatar, for example).

And all that is because we, as consumers, by and large don't reward good writing enough; or, conversely, reward spectacle over writing too much.

[rhorle]

It's been fun reading page after page after page of rhorle losing every argument and still staying faithful to his opinion. Didn't know it was possible to be proven so wrong so many times and still believe you were right..

Every argument? Can you indicate in what lore Minas Tirith has a waterfall on its point? Lmao. It is crazy how people lie just because they can't handle someone that disagrees with their opinion.

[InfiniteCharger]

I introduced lost because you specifically said no other show is as slow to answer questions. So Lost leaving questions unanswered after 6 seasons clearly shows you were wrong and that it is fine for RoP to have questions unanswered after 3 episodes. If you don't like Lost what about The Mandalorian? It took a full season to answer what Din looks like and some question left unanswered. Season 2 answered some but not all. Isn't that slower then 3 episodes?

OK. But clearly high fantasy and definitely not Tolkien are not about mystery box storytelling. We know where all this is going and there is no real mystery to what happens in this era. And all of these so-called 'mysteries' are to unravel how much they have changed the events and characters of the 2nd age in order to make this series. So by bringing up Lost what you are trying to do is to defend that kind of story telling here in the writing for this series. Which is fine. But only affirms that the show is intentionally setting up these 'mysteries' to drag out the story as opposed to just letting it unfold.

[rhorle]

OK. But clearly high fantasy and definitely not Tolkien are not about mystery box storytelling. We know where all this is going and there is no real mystery to what happens in this era.

The only reason why we knew where things were going in the Jackson film is because people read the books. The first time you read Tolkien's works there was no idea where everything was going. What places were. Who or what relevance people had. It unraveled as you read the book. By bringing up Lost, The Mandalorian, or any other show, is to indicate that not every question gets answered in the first episode that question appears in. I am really beginning to think that you have not watched many TV shows if you think they always answer every question a viewer has.

[PACOX]

So, how bad is it in reality?

After watching House of the Dragon I was pleasantly surprised how good it captured the early GoT mood while giving us new stuff. RoP looks like generic fantasy trash and everything I saw and read about it seemed awful. "Be happy that they gave you a TV show" was one of the reasons I've read why this show is good - that's a terrible answer for the question raised.

Tolkien is the definition of generic fantasy.

I wouldn't compare the two shows besides heavy use of English accents and being in low tech worlds. Other than that you have two very different universes.

[InfiniteCharger]

The only reason why we knew where things were going in the Jackson film is because people read the books. The first time you read Tolkien's works there was no idea where everything was going. What places were. Who or what relevance people had. It unraveled as you read the book. By bringing up Lost, The Mandalorian, or any other show, is to indicate that not every question gets answered in the first episode that question appears in. I am really beginning to think that you have not watched many TV shows if you think they always answer every question a viewer has.

The show is called rings of power. This show is based on Tolkien and he explicitly wrote about this and how it happened during the second age. You are going in circles now as this was already brought up as to why this isn't a mystery and we know all of this has to tie into the LOTR books. They are just making up their own version of the story and that is the only 'mystery' at this point in how different it is going to be from what Tolkien actually wrote. The 'gaps' in Tolkien are more along the lines of telling the narrative from a very high level and not getting into the finest details that would normally be told in numerous individual books set during the second age.

So honestly there isn't more to be said that hasn't been said before.

[rhorle]

The show is called rings of power. This show is based on Tolkien and he explicitly wrote about this and how it happened during the second age.

So can you point me to the book(s) that have the entire story explicitly written? The entire reason why Amazon can invent characters and stories is because Tolkien didn't write about the Second Age in depth. I highly doubt you'd be praising a encyclopedia show that just did random scenes of the different Tolkien entries lol. The "gaps" as you call the is not simply not getting into finer detail. There is no need to keep exaggerating to try and prove your point.

[Lady Atia]

Has it been confirmed anywhere that it's Halbrand? It seems quite unlikely that it's him, or the star hobo. Everyone's just playing "Secret Sauron" at this point. You've got to remember this is a 5 season arc we're watching. My money's on Halbrand just being what was revealed in this latest episode. As a human king, he's most likely to end up as a Nazgul.

Or he ends up being the King of the Dead. In the movies he had vultures on his crown, and Halbrands symbol is .... surprise surprise ... a vulture.

[Varodoc]

Or he ends up being the King of the Dead. In the movies he had vultures on his crown, and Halbrands symbol is .... surprise surprise ... a vulture.

The fact that you genuinely think this show and the movies are meant to be in the same continuity is hilarious.

[Orby]

The fact that you genuinely think this show and the movies are meant to be in the same continuity is hilarious.

to be fair the show runners did state that it was ideally planned to be set in the same context as Peter Jacksons films, whether they remained under that goal is another thing :P

[Lady Atia]

The fact that you genuinely think this show and the movies are meant to be in the same continuity is hilarious.

But ... it is? Just look at the Balrog and the Felbeasts. It's clearly meant to be part of the same continuity from the looks of the first three episodes, and actually quite better done than these weird "Shadow of Mordor" games that actually had bad lore (although no one cared because it looked cool, was "manly" and didn't have black people in it lol).

[Kumorii]

But ... it is? Just look at the Balrog and the Felbeasts. It's clearly meant to be part of the same continuity from the looks of the first three episodes, and actually quite better done than these weird "Shadow of Mordor" games that actually had bad lore (although no one cared because it looked cool, was "manly" and didn't have black people in it lol).

Actually people did voice complaints about some of the liberties they made.
Difference is that those games never came out to brag about how faithful they would be... Most already expected it to deviate. Then we also have the fact that those games were fucking good. Amazing even, and people tend to like things that are good. Hence why people dislike RoP.

The game even made new characters. Which is also a good way to make you able to have more freedom in how you write them.

[Varodoc]

But ... it is? Just look at the Balrog and the Felbeasts. It's clearly meant to be part of the same continuity from the looks of the first three episodes, and actually quite better done than these weird "Shadow of Mordor" games that actually had bad lore (although no one cared because it looked cool, was "manly" and didn't have black people in it lol).

People did complain about Shadows of Mordor/War content a lot, but you probably didn't notice it because you were complaining about the absence of your precious minority representation.

As for it being in the same continuity, the simple fact that the elves look like that in this show is proof that they aren't. Unless elves realized what good taste is only between the Second and Third age.