Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Guess that all depends on who you talk to, heh. Some people don't seem to regard a difference at all. Like Rhorle.

I can’t say I’ve read enough of Rhorle’s post to say if they fall into that category but there absolutely some people who compound actual hate watching with just any criticism.

[Jotaux]

What I didn't understand last episode is how they got out of that watchtower or w/e it was to get to the village without anyone seeing them. Is there a secret tunnel or something?

[Triceron]

What I didn't understand last episode is how they got out of that watchtower or w/e it was to get to the village without anyone seeing them. Is there a secret tunnel or something?

If they went out in the day then the Orcs may not have been able to scout them out. That's what I figure anyways.

The show doesn't do a great job of explaining things. It just does it and expects the fans to fill in the blanks however they please, much like how Numenoreans and Galadriel got there so fast. There's bunch of running theories that the show isn't following a sequential timeline and stuff was happening in Numenor days/weeks earlier than the Southlands, etc. Kinda hard to say though since they had that one episode with the meteor to tie together the Harfoot and Southlands plotline timing, but conveniently omitting Galadriel's POV since she wasn't around to see it.

[Kumorii]

If they went out in the day then the Orcs may not have been able to scout them out. That's what I figure anyways.

The show doesn't do a great job of explaining things. It just does it and expects the fans to fill in the blanks however they please, much like how Numenoreans and Galadriel got there so fast. There's bunch of running theories that the show isn't following a sequential timeline and stuff was happening in Numenor days/weeks earlier than the Southlands, etc. Kinda hard to say though since they had that one episode with the meteor to tie together the Harfoot and Southlands plotline timing, but conveniently omitting Galadriel's POV since she wasn't around to see it.

They were still at the tower when night fell.
They look up to the tower and then it cuts to the orcs already at the base of the mountain below the tower.

But I was confused by this as well and looking at it I thought the orc were on the other side of the mountain and the villages just went down on their side...
But that can't be it since it's a reservoir on the other side of it and mountains around. And the water went through the village so by that account it has to be on the same side...

I jot it down to teleportation like so many other things. This "filling in the blanks" seems very common, too much in fact.

[rhorle]

Kinda hard to say though since they had that one episode with the meteor to tie together the Harfoot and Southlands plotline timing, but conveniently omitting Galadriel's POV since she wasn't around to see it.

In the trailer Amazon released for the meteor it is implied her eyes are tracking it it. 2 seconds in. However in the actual episode she "tracks" birds instead. Some have a theory that her brothers dagger was "modified" by Sauron and influencing her actions. Maybe it being touched by Valinor "did something". If the Meteor man is not a friendly Maiar/thing it could have summoned him.

I think it is clear the Meteor appeared at the same time she felt the call of the dagger though. As it streaking across the sky is interwoven with her. The impact even transitions to her jumping in the water with the impact sound still playing as she goes underwater. It is an odd choice if it isn't the same point in time. 0:53 to 0:58 if anyone wants to rewatch that portion of the 1st episode.

Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ALOgprj1xg

[kenn9530]

If they went out in the day then the Orcs may not have been able to scout them out. That's what I figure anyways.

The show doesn't do a great job of explaining things. It just does it and expects the fans to fill in the blanks however they please, much like how Numenoreans and Galadriel got there so fast. There's bunch of running theories that the show isn't following a sequential timeline and stuff was happening in Numenor days/weeks earlier than the Southlands, etc. Kinda hard to say though since they had that one episode with the meteor to tie together the Harfoot and Southlands plotline timing, but conveniently omitting Galadriel's POV since she wasn't around to see it.

Any show that is set over vast distances wont have all stories running all at the same time, its just simple logic and common sense to accept that, there is only so much you can put into a tv show episode and you dont want to put in everyone travelling all the time or it will waste way too much time better spent on other things.

[bledgor]

They were still at the tower when night fell.
They look up to the tower and then it cuts to the orcs already at the base of the mountain below the tower.

But I was confused by this as well and looking at it I thought the orc were on the other side of the mountain and the villages just went down on their side...
But that can't be it since it's a reservoir on the other side of it and mountains around. And the water went through the village so by that account it has to be on the same side...

I jot it down to teleportation like so many other things. This "filling in the blanks" seems very common, too much in fact.

Its fast travel, show runners are playing that 6-d chess with the modern adaptation comment, gotta get the gamers in for a piece of the action.

[fakaroonie]

It's almost depressing to watch some LotR scenes now on youtube with big epic scale armies fighting each other, while now on TV we get 15 peasants defending against 50 orcs. Then a cavalry of 30 people comes in to save the day. I mean... where are all the people?

[InfiniteCharger]

No. What I said was he didn't think any of his work as "finished" so published or unpublished shouldn't matter. And I said the rights to his unfinished work was either sold with UA or added at some point in the future. As Embracer has limited matching rights to other Tolkien work. I never said the SZC (Saul Zaentz not salzance) shopped the rights to a TV series. I said Warner Brothers and the Tolkien Estate (Christopher Tolkien) shopped the rights after the gambling digital app lawsuit.

You are being dishonest and this is literally what you wrote:

Right. That still doesn't mean he wouldn't have because he sold rights to his other works. Those rights also included "limited matching rights" if his other work was ever brought to screen. He was fine with his story being drastically changed because the rights didn't require X rules for adaptations. The only one making stuff up here is yourself because you are trying to definitively state what Tolkien would do. I have repeatedly say there is nothing to indicate either way what he would do. While you, and others, keep trying to state that he wouldn't have done something. Do you understand the difference?

He didn't intend the entire story to be a whole because he didn't have the entire story finished. Again he wanted to re-write the hobbit to better fit the world of Lord of the Rings. He was constantly changing his world where he wanted to make the world no longer flat. So he was fine with the story being piecemeal because that is how he wrote and how he considered his own work. He wrote things in pieces and went back and fixed or changed things as needed for those new pieces to fit.

You are wrong and just keep repeating falsehoods trying to sound correct. Tolkien never finished the story of the 2nd aqe and therefore never published it and therefore would not have been OK with someone getting the rights to something unfinished he never published. And certainly he would have never been OK with the appendices being used as the basis for the rights to a story of the 2nd age in a TV series and not even the Silmarilion, Unfinished Tales and his notes. That doesn't even make sense.

But fine. Believe what you want. No need to keep repeating your nonsensical argument.

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Shad's not bad, he's got a lot of indepth knowledge. But he plays it up and I think he's too opinionated at times. He flips his shit way too easily. Probably part of the character, but it gets old fast.

I don't even think RoP is worth analyzing, the swordplay is pure fantasy.

Just because it is fantasy doesn't mean they shouldn't have taken it seriously. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, they could have actually adopted a more "modern" approach as found in D&D to define the fighting skills and training of the elves. I mean they do it in mocap for game trailers all the time and in actual MMO game play. The whole point here is that they have to make the fantasy seem real and if that fantasy is that the elves have their own way of fighting then they should take some effort to show that. Just like they should take the effort to show that Elves are normally very much taller than normal men and that the Numenoreans are larger than most normal men and epic warriors. None of that was done here and that is the reason why it falls so hard on its face. Galadriel is shorter than almost everybody on the set in most cases. That just shows how much they did not care about the lore of middle earth.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It's almost depressing to watch some LotR scenes now on youtube with big epic scale armies fighting each other, while now on TV we get 15 peasants defending against 50 orcs. Then a cavalry of 30 people comes in to save the day. I mean... where are all the people?

Aren’t the movies more or less the last stand of all remaining men and elfs in middle earth and orcs who have had tens (hundreds??) of years to grow there size?

[Adamas102]

Or the trailers just didn’t look good? It felt like a generic high fantasy series, nothing Tolkien about it except for the name.

This is a weird one because visually Tolkien IS pretty much just “generic high fantasy” given how much the genre drew from his works. What made Tolkien special were things like his narrative style, highly descriptive language for scenery, creation of languages, extensive connected lore, and being the one who developed a lot of what are now generic fantasy races. These qualities are either literary in nature or have simply become ubiquitous throughout the genre.

It’s people like John Howe and Peter Jackson who have set the tone for what LOOKS like Tolkien, and if this show has gotten anything right it’s continuing that visual style.

[Syegfryed]

True but its also the presentation, its the Angry Joe syndrome of reviews I am not a fan of, I kind of outgrew it 10 years ago. Not much constructive is said its just yelling very loudly, and more nit picking for the sake of nit picking and its doesn't create a positive critical outlook, only spreading this bitter angry nerd outlook that no one is going to take seriously outside of conservative white males for the most part. Which it does seem more catered to. No offensive to you conservatives which will no doubt be coming at me now)

Like i said, i didn't watch other reviews, barely watch the ones from RoP, and every time he critize the show he says what could have been done to make it better, he is not talking purely out of his ass.

His opinion on the Galadriel swordplay, while is legit, you can say the same for every show this way, 90% of shows with sword fighting are bad because the majority of people who watch don't give a shit about how someone swings their sword lol. The show is a play, its acting, its not supposed to be accurate sword play, no one is going to care unless you nit pick it. and sure making videos to analyse these sword play is fun, but its a horrible tool to just bash the show, which doesn't need further help on that :P

There is bad swordplay and awful swordplay, you at least need to make something standard to portray those people

Shad's not bad, he's got a lot of indepth knowledge. But he plays it up and I think he's too opinionated at times. He flips his shit way too easily. Probably part of the character, but it gets old fast.

I don't even think RoP is worth analyzing, the swordplay is pure fantasy.

He does for other shows, and explain that you can do good swordplay in fantasy, but here, it was rly, rly bad, to a point of then not even aiming to the other person

This thread alone broke 100 pages month before the show was out due to people hating on the show without seeing any bad writing or how the show was amateurish, there is absolutely an anti fanbase and has been one since they said they were casting outside of just white people.

Only the blind or the hopefully actually tough this was not going to be awful, anyone who read bout what they were doing already knew how it was going to end, and turns out? they were right anyway.

True but its also the presentation, its the Angry Joe syndrome of reviews I am not a fan of, I kind of outgrew it 10 years ago. Not much constructive is said its just yelling very loudly, and more nit picking for the sake of nit picking and its doesn't create a positive critical outlook, only spreading this bitter angry nerd outlook that no one is going to take seriously outside of conservative white males for the most part. Which it does seem more catered to. No offensive to you conservatives which will no doubt be coming at me now)

Like i said, i didn't watch other reviews, barely watch the ones from RoP, and every time he critize the show he says what could have been done to make it better, he is not talking purely out of his ass.

His opinion on the Galadriel swordplay, while is legit, you can say the same for every show this way, 90% of shows with sword fighting are bad because the majority of people who watch don't give a shit about how someone swings their sword lol. The show is a play, its acting, its not supposed to be accurate sword play, no one is going to care unless you nit pick it. and sure making videos to analyse these sword play is fun, but its a horrible tool to just bash the show, which doesn't need further help on that :P

There is bad swordplay and awful swordplay, you at least need to make something standard to portray those people

Shad's not bad, he's got a lot of indepth knowledge. But he plays it up and I think he's too opinionated at times. He flips his shit way too easily. Probably part of the character, but it gets old fast.

I don't even think RoP is worth analyzing, the swordplay is pure fantasy.

He does for other shows, and explain that you can do good swordplay in fantasy, but here, it was rly, rly bad, to a point of then not even aiming to the other person

[InfiniteCharger]

Amazon are using the popularity the films had to make money, nothing to do with the books at all since the books were barely known before the films, the books are full of flaws to bad plots holes and just things that make no sense, so moaning about so called flaws in a tv series when the books are flawed makes no sense. Being a scholar of language and lit doesnt make you perfect at writing a book.

Tolkien was barely known while he was alive and most of the success is from the films. He knew with his style of writing it would be harder to implement it into a film.

You are spouting absolute falsehoods. His work has been popular since the Hobbit was first published 85 years ago.

George Allen & Unwin Ltd. of London published the first edition of The Hobbit on 21 September 1937 with a print run of 1,500 copies, which sold out by December because of enthusiastic reviews. This first printing was illustrated in black and white by Tolkien, who designed the dust jacket as well. Houghton Mifflin of Boston and New York reset type for an American edition, to be released early in 1938, in which four of the illustrations would be colour plates. Allen & Unwin decided to incorporate the colour illustrations into their second printing, released at the end of 1937. Despite the book's popularity, paper rationing due to World War II and not ending until 1949 meant that the Allen & Unwin edition of the book was often unavailable during this period.

Subsequent editions in English were published in 1951, 1966, 1978 and 1995. Numerous English-language editions of The Hobbit have been produced by several publishers.[46] In addition, The Hobbit has been translated into over sixty languages, with more than one published version for some languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit

As for his writing, the main criticism has mostly been that it is a bit too complex, especially for young readers. But nobody would ever argue this was because he was a bad writer. The man was an esteemed scholar of the English language in England.

Rosebury studies several examples of Tolkien's diction in The Lord of the Rings at length, citing passages and analysing them in detail to show what they achieve. One is the moment when the Hobbit Merry has helped to kill the Witch-King, the leader of the Ringwraiths, and finds himself standing alone on the battlefield. Part of the quoted passage runs:

"And still Meriadoc stood there blinking through his tears, and no one spoke to him, indeed none seemed to heed him... And behold! there lay his weapon, but the blade was smoking like a dry branch that has been thrust in a fire; and as he watched, it writhed and withered and was consumed. So passed the sword of the Barrow-Downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-Kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will."

Rosebury writes that this begins with "essentially plain syntax", as if Merry were speaking; but "woven into the clauses" are subtle clues in the syntax, like "heed" rather than "notice", and the Hobbit's full name Meriadoc to stay in touch with the un-Hobbitlike "heroic tonality" of the passage. The first sentence of the second paragraph, he notes, heralds a shift of mood, as does the following "But glad would he have been", with effective use of inversion. Rosebury shows how awkward the uninverted form would have been: "But he who wrought it long ago ... would have been glad to know its fate." The passage ends with a powerfully musical sentence with assonances between "blade", "wield", "dealt" and so on; alliteration with "wield", "wound", "will"; memorable phrases like "unseen sinews"; and the immediacy of the present participles "cleaving...breaking", the implied "and" importantly suppressed. Rosebury states that the wide range of styles could have become an untidy mess, but the narrative is big enough to allow Tolkien to modulate gracefully between low and high styles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_prose_style

[Triceron]

Any show that is set over vast distances wont have all stories running all at the same time, its just simple logic and common sense to accept that, there is only so much you can put into a tv show episode and you dont want to put in everyone travelling all the time or it will waste way too much time better spent on other things.

The problem is there is no common sense in this show at all.

They don't address these things at all, and leave it up to the audience to make sense of without showing or explaining. While it's not always a problem, it definitely leads to a disjointed plot that doesn't really make sense if you start thinking about it.

But sure, if your idea of common sense is 'don't think about it, it just happens' then yeah, I agree, ignorant is bliss.

[rhorle]

You are wrong and just keep repeating falsehoods trying to sound correct. Tolkien never finished the story of the 2nd aqe and therefore never published it and therefore would not have been OK with someone getting the rights to something unfinished he never published. And certainly he would have never been OK with the appendices being used as the basis for the rights to a story of the 2nd age in a TV series and not even the Silmarilion, Unfinished Tales and his notes. That doesn't even make sense. But fine. Believe what you want. No need to keep repeating your nonsensical argument.

I'm not repeating falsehoods. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is false. I never said Tolkien finished the story of the 2nd age. I never said he published it. He was okay with people getting the rights to The Hobbit when he wanted to re-write the entire thing to better fit Lord of the Rings. Hence why I keep telling you that the line between published and unpublished didn't mean anything to Tolkien. Why would he have never been okay with the appendices, part of a published book, be used for an adaptation? Don't you keep saying he approved of published works being used? It is strange how you contradict yourself whenever you need to.

[InfiniteCharger]

This is a weird one because visually Tolkien IS pretty much just “generic high fantasy” given how much the genre drew from his works. What made Tolkien special were things like his narrative style, highly descriptive language for scenery, creation of languages, extensive connected lore, and being the one who developed a lot of what are now generic fantasy races. These qualities are either literary in nature or have simply become ubiquitous throughout the genre.

It’s people like John Howe and Peter Jackson who have set the tone for what LOOKS like Tolkien, and if this show has gotten anything right it’s continuing that visual style.

Tolkien's work is not generic fantasy because of all the work he put into establishing the back story, languages, cultures, races and history of Middle Earth. That is the complete opposite of "generic" fantasy. Do you even know what that term means?

[Triceron]

Just because it is fantasy doesn't mean they shouldn't have taken it seriously. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, they could have actually adopted a more "modern" approach as found in D&D to define the fighting skills and training of the elves. I mean they do it in mocap for game trailers all the time and in actual MMO game play. The whole point here is that they have to make the fantasy seem real and if that fantasy is that the elves have their own way of fighting then they should take some effort to show that. Just like they should take the effort to show that Elves are normally very much taller than normal men and that the Numenoreans are larger than most normal men and epic warriors. None of that was done here and that is the reason why it falls so hard on its face. Galadriel is shorter than almost everybody on the set in most cases. That just shows how much they did not care about the lore of middle earth.

What I meant about fantasy is that it doesn't aim to be realistic at all. This show's combat is comparable to Xena Warrior Princess.

Breaking down Rings of Power's combat in realism terms misses the point of the spectacle, like an MMA expert breaking down Professional Wrestling moves. It's all flash no substance, and that's sort of the point.

[InfiniteCharger]

I'm not repeating falsehoods. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is false. I never said Tolkien finished the story of the 2nd age. I never said he published it. He was okay with people getting the rights to The Hobbit when he wanted to re-write the entire thing to better fit Lord of the Rings. Hence why I keep telling you that the line between published and unpublished didn't mean anything to Tolkien. Why would he have never been okay with the appendices, part of a published book, be used for an adaptation? Don't you keep saying he approved of published works being used? It is strange how you contradict yourself whenever you need to.

You are repeating yourself and not making any sense. He didn't publish those works because they weren't finished. Therefore, by that fact alone, he didn't want them to be viewed by the public in any format. So you are repeating the same absurd illogical reasoning that just makes no sense and has nothing to do with facts.....

I understood you the first time, you aren't saying anything different and it still is false.

So stop wasting time repeating yourself and just leave it.

I don't agree with you because your reasoning is nonsense.

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What I meant about fantasy is that it doesn't aim to be realistic at all. This show's combat is comparable to Xena Warrior Princess.

Most of the 'fantastical' parts of Tolkien are the fantasy creatures almost every thing else is modeled on real world history. The armor, weapons and combat are all modeled on real world equivalents. One unique part is that some of the weapons and style of fighting varies among the various races. Otherwise, it is not a fantasy like World of Warcraft with different schools of magic and magical combat. The only thing that makes the combat in fantastical is the scale, where typical large battles have thousands and thousands of orcs versus thousands of humans and so forth. Obviously you don't see any of that in this series. The numenoreans barely were able to put together 5 ships for this mission and those ships were small in size. While in the actual lore, the Numenorean navy was so huge it covered the entire sea to the horizon and they built the largest ships ever to sail on Arda before or since. And this show obviously went against all of that with these small scale battles and so forth. The southlings or southlanders have a few raggedy huts and not even a single walled town and they face off against a few orcs. And of course a tower manned by a handful of elves that were easily captured. So none of the scale that you would expect in something written by Tolkien.

I know I posted it before but this is the kind of epic combat of high fantasy that is all inspired by Tolkien. And the large warrior could be seen as something like what a Numenorean is in Tolkien.



And most people experience high fantasy from video games like this, so compared to that, what we see in this series is much less epic.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Only the blind or the hopefully actually tough this was not going to be awful, anyone who read bout what they were doing already knew how it was going to end, and turns out? they were right anyway.

so from the start people thought it would be bad without actually seeing any of it but still stuck around for months in advance solely to hate on it?

Sounds a lot like an anti fanbase.

[rhorle]

You are repeating yourself and not making any sense. He didn't publish those works because they weren't finished. Therefore, by that fact alone, he didn't want them to be viewed by the public in any format. So you are repeating the same absurd illogical reasoning that just makes no sense and has nothing to do with facts

Yet he willingly gave information, contained with in, to people when inquiring about stuff. He never considered any of his works finished. Hence why up until his death he was fixing and changing things. Your reasoning of "published" has no merit because of how he treated all of his work. You don't have to like it but to call it a falsehood or nonsense is silly.

The biggest tale is that Canon incorporates those unpublished works. If we are to count them as things that Tolkien didn't want the public to see then only The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings matters to canon. I'm pretty sure you've used things from the work his son published that JRR never wanted to be public in discussions before. Most people that discuss Tolkien have. So it is silly to only draw the line now for "adaptations". It also ignores how Rings of Power is drawing from work that was published in addition to unpublished work. So your reasoning is even more irrelevant to the show.