kensei

On 28/10/2022 at 08:09, Kevvy Metal said:

 

Is this kensei? It'll be exactly like every Star Wars thread on here. Like the Terminator, he absolutely will not stop.

Right. I think that's me totally done here. I have basically only chatted on 2 TV related threads in about 6 months but it's just not worth it.

Apologies for messing up the thread and the show you enjoyed.

So once again, not trying to police anyone's joy. Happy people like it. But the actual question was whether it was a faithful adaptation and, no, it just isn't.

4 minutes ago, Mikes said:

 

From History of Middle Earth:

 

"They (orcs) give it (mithril) in tribute to Sauron, who has long been gathering and hoarding all that he can find. It is not known why: not for beauty, but for some secret purpose in the making of weapons of war."

 

Like I said, vague as fuck. He leaves more out of his writing than he puts in. Any adaptation to screen will need to get creative to fill the gaps.

Or you could read the Lord of The Rings above, which gives its properties. The above also fails to mention that mithril has the magic light of the Silmarils in it. Odd he didn't mention it, given the fact they are really, really important to his lore. It's not that vague.

@Thor I stand corrected. Is the Tolkien estate holding back for a bigger budget go around with the Silmarillion material? Utterly crazy. 

As the main descriptions of the Second Age appear in "Akallabeth" and "Of the Rings of Power" in the Silmarillion, it would be glorious insanity if they aren't allowed to use any of it. As I understood they licensed the Appendices and sole bits of the Silmarillion. There seems to be a lot of confusion about it. I read it said they couldn't even name Galadriel's brother because of rights issues, but Finrod's name is right there in the Appendices.

Regardless they have changed stuff even within the bounds of LoTR.

Also if you wanted the definition of crap fan fiction

Would be right up there.

11 hours ago, Mikes said:

 

No, he just said it had special properties, and made a point that because of those properties Sauron went out fo his way to gather it all for himself.

 

Like much of Tolkien's writings outside of what he published he left a to more unsaid than said, and honestly a myth built around a bolrog and elf fighting over an ore vein giving it magical powers wouldn't even crack the top ten weirdest things he actually was explicit about.

 

The imbuement of mithril with the ability to prolong the existence of elves in ME was a decent plot device to get the ball rolling on that storyline. LIke much in the show it could have been delivered better, but it fits in with the whole.

 

I'm looking forward to see where the storylines go in S2. Obviously meteorman is

 

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One of the blue wizards. This will be interesting as Tolkiden wrote nothing about them. So far the show has shined where they haven't tried to recreat Tolkien's storyliens have taken the freedom to branch out - thinking Arondir and the Southlands and the Harfoots here. SO I have high hopes for Nori and .... Blue.

 

What where those properties?

It's just, like, a metal. A really good metal. If he has lots more mad stuff, I dunno, why not go with those.

The story as written is Sauron turns up, disguised as "Annatar" and tries to convince the Elves that they can make Middle Earth as beautiful as Valinor. Some don't take the bait, but some do. There's no great mystery for the reader who he is. The Rings are forged under his direction and knowledge. 

You could expand that into an interesting story. Or you can change a load of things around to get a "Who is Sauron?" mystery box. 

You might like it. Lots of people here seem to. Grand, it's not for me to police your joy. But the original question was around whether this is faithful and I just do not see that at all.

6 minutes ago, Festoon said:

Tolkien says Sauron tries to gather as much mithril to himself as he can.

He said

16 hours ago, Wiper said:

Every time I see some moron on social media/youtube whinging about how the presence of black characters who aren't bad'uns is some sort of woke betrayal of everything Lord of the Rings stands for it makes me want to like the series more. Alas, things don't work that way, and it remains very much a disappointment for me, but none of its flaws are related to the skin tone or gender of its actors (or any other "woke" attributes one might like to claim it has).

This.

@Chindie trying to force an eye catching mystery where Tolkien really had no interest in eye catching mysteries and chopping and changing a lot of things to try and get there is in itself unfaithful to Tolkien.

Its just not very faithful beyond a superficial level. Even what they did with mithril - it just feels like they didn't get the themes at all.

I can see how it's easily beat out by

Riveting. 

Something along the lines of the above could be done well or badly. But it offers the chance of something character focused.

What we got instead was a fairly weak mystery. 

1 hour ago, Festoon said:

 

Jesus, a show about Elven Liberace.

A show about Elven Michelangelo or Van Gogh. Tortured artist is a really easy riff. His grandfather is the greatest Smith the world ever produced.

The depiction of him as middle aged as opposed to the young and beautiful Galadriel is nonsensical. Elves are immortal and Galadriel is older. It would make sense to move Elrond's relationship with Durin to him, since he was noted as a friend to the Dwarves and helped make the gates of Moria.

Ultimately he's the one tempted. Elrond, Gil Galad and Galadriel are suspicious of "Annatar" and turn him away, but it's Celebrimbor that gets on board with him. He has a grizzly fate with a slight defiance that looks perfect for the first arc of a Second Age show, from the forging of the rings to the start of the war.

Even if you really like what they did, you can still think it was a swerve from the obvious direction.

Erik Kain hates it for approximately the reasons I didn't like it, but much much more so

https://www.polygon.com/23414847/rings-power-season-1-review

I think the point that the obvious protagonist for a show based around the Rings of Power is Celebrimbor rather than Galadriel is spot on, though. 

Not sure that's true

https://www.polygon.com/23414847/rings-power-season-1-review

That's pretty negative, but not really comparing to House of The Dragon.

6 hours ago, Benny said:

If I could pick one thing I really didn't like about the series, I think it was in episode 6:

 

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The scene where the villagers are being held by the Orcs, and an older man and woman are shown in extreme distress and terror as they watch an Orc slowly pushing a sword into them both, without any cuts away from it. I found it really nasty and exploitative, and it felt like it was trying to be Game of Thrones in tone for a bit, which for me does not fit the source material at all. There is always darkness and terror and horror in The Lord of the Rings, but I don't think it needs gratuitous torture.

 

I tend to agree, but

3 hours ago, scottcr said:

 I think you’ll find that the humans that become the Nazgûl do it entirely out of their own free will

They accept the rings of their own free will but one of the few powers of the One Ring we actually get is that it allows the welder to dominate and control the users of the other rings. 

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Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths

They are under the dominion of the One. They don't have free will.

I think it's better to think of the orcs like that because the moral implications of not doing that are fairly horrifying, particularly in a world that tends to be reasonably black and white.

3 hours ago, Benny said:

Seems a bit weird to be so sniffy about the lore of this but not know that about Orcs. The show plays right into that aspect with them specifically.

 

And I think suggesting that it could undercut the heroism of the characters seems like a bit of a misunderstanding of heroism. A hero isn't necessarily just made from fighting evil. It could be how that person chooses to act in situations where they can help others or a whole host of different things.

Yeah I don't know how I missed the orcs were corrupted elves, my copy of the Silmarillion must have had those pages ripped out!!!! Weird as lollol!!

How many genocides can you claim to want and how many sympathetic creatures can you murder and still be cool? 

I understand what they are going for and how they are also trying to build up the things that happen in the finale. It makes sense in those terms. I just don't think it's a good fit for this story and world. I felt in the scene with Adar and Galadriel, she came across as particularly nasty and I don't think it did her character any favours.

Not claiming this is anything other than just my opinion. 

1 hour ago, scottcr said:

Orcs are bad because they are bad? They were created by torturing elves under ground. 
 

Read Smith of Wooton Major and Tolkein’s essay to go with it. He wasn’t precious about his lore… 

That's cool I didn't know how they were created.

Tolkien never solved the problem of orcs being effectively irredeemable. I am not sure these writers are going to.

They are bad for the same reason the Nazgul are: they effectively don't have free will and are an extension of the Dark Lord's power.

It's not that in other places the idea hasn't been explored or could work. Just here I think the nature of it means you'll undercut the heroic characters.

6 hours ago, scottcr said:

On wizard

 

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I like the fact he’s in the 2nd age. It makes more sense for him to build up a long relationship with Galadriel and Elrond.

 

Anyway, ignore any consideration of source material. It is still weirdly paced, with characters that do inconsistent things and with episodes that are a bit on the long side and probably have too many threads. There are strange horse riding scenes. It's not awful, some of the character interactions are good, some of the visuals and actions sequences are genuinely impressive. It threatens to catch fire and never does. I hated the mystery box stuff. 

Maybe you won't, but surely you've seen more compelling TV in the last ten years?

Orcs

13 minutes ago, Benny said:

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It's not a cheap reference when the character is used in nearly every episode of the entire show and is literally part of the script and series narrative. Whether he was in the "Second Age" or not in the source material is irrelevant - they've used a character to actually tell a story with. It's really weird to take that as being another "memberberries" thing when there are much better examples.

 

19 minutes ago, Benny said:

An interesting thing about The Lord of The Rings itself is that Tolkien was basically a fanfic writer for all the great sagas. The novels are steeped in a great nostalgia for some kind of lost or forgotten European continental history.

 

An adaptation that has a good stab at the big events set before the War of the Ring is of course going to be filled with "references" to things we know about, simply because that's exactly what it's doing. It's literally telling the story of how those things came about. It obviously has to hit all those beats because that's the exact story it's telling.

 

It's not doing "member this" lazy pandering when those elements are an intrinsic part of the events and worldbuilding.

There's lots of linkages but like

I think they passed up potentially interesting stuff

52 minutes ago, scottcr said:

It took you a decade to even accept the PJ films? Why do you even bother with this?

I disliked the change in Aragon's character - I came to the book late, so I found having a character that's not a reluctant hero refreshing and there was a bunch of others stuff I didn't like. And genuinely - as anticlimactic as it would any film, I always found the scouring of the shire an important sequence. They won, but it didn't stop bad things from happening.

However I came to appreciate the need to adapt across different mediums, and the fact that you need to consider it a different thing. I thought I'd loosened up.

Turns out, I have not loosened up.

However I think part of the brilliance of early seasons of Game of Thrones is the characters are all recognisable. They adapt, some things I think better and some I think worse, but the core of the characters are all there. Later seasons they stop doing that - look what they did to my poor boy Doran Martell - and the show immediately suffers.

I know the characters here are very lightly sketched in the books but it just feels really far off, particularly the elves. They don't feel right. Elrond, maybe.

I am Erik Kain

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2022/10/14/the-rings-of-power-season-1-finale-review-a-dreadful-mess/

Anyway, the three elven rings don't corrupt, Gandalf didn't lose his place in heaven,  Galadriel's reaction is appropriate for a B level superhero in a CW TV show but not for an immortal, wise being that has just lived through the last metal war, dwarf women still have beards and you are all wrong.

I am glad everyone seems to like it. I loosened up on the Jackson films - a little - after a decade, so maybe there's some hope in another ten years I manage to see some of it.

17 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

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When you look at how the last scene showing the rings is shot and is played - Elrond holding the scroll but forgetting about it etc. It's clear the allure of the power of the rings they have made is far greater than any misgivings about who was involved in it. You can see the desire on all of their faces. That was how I interpreted it anyway.

 

Was this a good Tolkien adaptation? God no. I'll spare you the full 10,000 essay on why. It bears as much relation to Tolkien as the Lucifer show does to the comic.

But Lucifer was a fun show in its own right and generally well liked. On its own terms, was this a good show? Also no.

Baffled by the positive reaction here. This commits every prequel sin that the Star Wars prequels did and worse - explaining stuff that didn't need explained, creating connections that reduce the scope of the world - in a story with lots of natural connections anyway - mad fit in the gap retcons and giant wink to camera it's like poetry it rhymes dialogue.

But let's ignore that. The pacing was just weird, so much so that a few of the threads and characters we've been following didn't appear at all in the last episode, characters do a lot of incredibly stupid things, stupidly - just actually walk through the things Galadriel did this season and why she did them and despair or wonder what the actual point of the Numenor stuff was. This episode a few absolute depths for me

And yet, there's the odd flash in there

Which hints at something better just enough for me to watch in hope of it finding its way to something better, rather than a full on Discovery hate watch.

2 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

I always liked that, that Tolkien was like,  'there's this elf guy, nothing special about him except he's married to Galadriel'.

Well aside from being a Prince of Doriath, leading an army against Sauron, being the Lord of Lothlorien and recognised as one of the wisest elves left in Middle Earth by the Third Age, aye.

The antipathy Celeborn has with Gimli in Lord of the Rings is because Tolkien had a bit of backstory to draw upon. 

I am interested to see which option they go for to resolve their retcon

In general this remains pretty and too slow.

So people just survived:

48 minutes ago, Sarlaccfood said:

I see your from the “makes no sense!!” School of criticism. 
 

It might have been strategically dumb or something but symbolically it was about him trusting the humans to make their own choice and do the right thing, as the whole plot thread started with the resentment the humans have towards the Elves for supervising them for hundreds of years, watching over them suspiciously in their tower.

No. That level of stupid undercuts the characters in involved. They spent huge amount of time establishing that the object is associated with Sauron, of huge importance to the enemy, intrinsically evil and hard to destroy. Having invested that amount of time you have to treat it with a certain amount of respect.

Just think about Galadriel in context of the show. Established that Galadriel has been chasing Sauron forever. She's obsessed to the point of risking friendships. She got off the boat to paradise to chase Sauron. She convinced Numenor to send an army. Yet she's not the remotest bit interested in a clue that could lead her to him, or give a clue about his power. It's not just it doesn't make sense, it contradicts work done to date.

If you want the "We trust these humans now" payoff, you can get there but you need more work.