The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series

I didn't hate this! The plotting is ropey as hell and the dialogue...oof. But it looks nice, the performances are solid, and the bones of a potentially compelling story are here. I'm enjoying it through the lens of "extremely expensive fanfic"

elves schmelves all these dudes look like relics from third-tier English boy bands ugh

I watched most of the first episode last night though think I may have been falling asleep. So interesting I guess
This is like the Silmarillion plus innit.
Like not sure to what extent it is directly from Tolkien.
Does look good. I assume filesize must be visual data. Every file looks like it is larger than what that duration normally is anyway from my own experience. On a torrent site there are normally several groupings of filesize options from something to watch on a portable screen to something that is several gb per file.
I tend to go toward the smaller end of the scale not quite the smallest since it does look good on a medium size flatscreen. Every option for this seemed to be larger filesize than normal. Range I pick it seemed about 1/3 larger than normal for a standard tv show length.
Subsequently I was expecting it to be epic in length. Which looked like it might be a chore to sit through 2 in a row of.

So looks good and I will get through episode 2 later.

I'm enjoying it with a few reservations (those pennywhistles...urgh). Visually gorgeous.

We immediately clocked the music as being the work of Bear McCreary, who also does the terrible music for Outlander. In the end, the Oirishness didn't bother me that much. I sort of get it? The elves are English, (including that guy who always plays Michael Palin in things), the dwarves are Scottish, so I guess the harfoots have to be from somewhere. But it didn't even seem like an Irish accent they were going for, as much as a sort of Traveller/Gypsy accent, which is way worse. Oh well. Lenny Henry can do what he loikes at this stage, I don't care.
Overall, I liked it more than I thought I would. Certainly compared to House of the Dragon. I'd much rather watch a lot of exposition interspersed with a stone-smashing contest and some business on a raft than mechanical shagging and boring jousting scenes which do not even have Geoffrey Chaucer in them. At least it has colours! And jokes! And it was genuinely kind of affecting to see Khazad-Dum in all its glory.

The Rings of Peace more like

I watched the first ep last night, quite pished and all I can remember was that it had some terrible acting and was rank garbage, but I say that about nearly everything these days.

Quite liked it, it was better than the Hobbit movies anyway.

But so tiresome to do a prequel and yet STILL launch with extensive WHAT HAS COME BEFORES of Morgoth and Sauron v1.0. Like, if you've got years to tell the story of the world before LotR, maybe just fucking tell the story of the world before LotR?

lenny henrys big book of prophecy seems extremely dumb

like something out of bad video game storytelling, not a lotr head but my understanding is that the wider lore doesn't have any of the prophecy/chosen one garbage that is in all mass market fantasy/sci fi media

There’s moments as background — the long dead figure of Malbeth the Seer, a message or two from Galadriel, another long dead dude who was at the Paths of the Dead — but nothing central. So yeah the book of prophecies thing is very left field.

Strange, I didn't read that as a "book of prophecy" at all, but rather a simple almanac. Which made a lot of sense to me in the context of the Harfoots being nomads who need to keep track of the seasons, etc. Did I miss something?

I’m not particularly attached to Tolkien, I also thought this was much better than I was expecting despite some dodgy acting and odd editing flubs. Thought the opening 20 mins of the first episode was really pacey and involving, and that built up a lot of goodwill. Miles better than the new GoT, EOTW and the Hobbit movies (so far)

Accessing TV through the Prime app is always a mood killer though

I kind of died a little when, in the second episode, Galadriel’s new shipmate reveals he was chased out of his home in the south by orcs in recent years by orcs when she’s been stomping around the north for a bazillion years and believes no one’s seen an orc for a long time

really tricky, that Sauron!

Some ppl on reddit theorizing that ship dude *is* Sauron. Tricky indeed!

I doubt any of the characters so far are Sauron but maybe they’re all Sauron!

wizard who fell to middle earth is probably not, though

Meteor Man is clearly David Bowie after he died on Earth

Blind Guardian shoulda done the score

lmao

Husband and I were amusing ourselves with the idea that dude who fell out of the sky is Tom Bombadil, and that as soon as he learns to talk it is all over for this programme that Amazon spent nearly a billion dollars on. (We know it's not him.)

Ha believe me at one point I was thinking “Be amusing if this guy is Bombadil-ish.” He’s being handled better than I expected; having him be unable to really communicate and capable of violent or at least threatening acts makes him a bit of a chaos factor for now.

I have to say a sequence I thought was really striking was the house combat with the one orc. Bayona with good horror and action chops there, and after so much ‘heroes defeat huge rabble of orcs’ over most of the earlier films, turning it into a situation where just one orc can be a brutally terrifying and not easy to kill threat was smart. Be nice if we see more of that.

Yes, it was great to see an orc that was actually terrifying!

I fell asleep during both episodes. I think it was the cliched dialog combined with all the unearned gravitas.

lol im just stitting back enjoying what complete pricks the elves are

which is canon dont @ me

just watched the 2nd ep, it was much better than the first. All that invoking some ancient rite to get into a house where they all hate you and consider you a wanker was pretty good.

easter egg hommage to last of the summer wine also

they should be paying some Compo for that. The hunk on the raft is a very tedious character and a crap actor. On the other hand, Owain Arthur is brilliant.

🚨dots and loops reference 🚨

the writers seem to have played a LOT of Diablo growing up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBu-yUzWXqg

"to the east i go not"

looks pretty east to me dude

Do we know how far Valinor is from Middle Earth?

Like, it doesn't seem the best plan to jump off the boat if you're then in the middle of the sea, hundreds of miles from anywhere?

ned (aka the bombadil of the internet) will better know the answer to this than me but don't the elves (some elves) at one point get from old valinor (pre sundering) to old middle earth (pre flood) by walking across the equivalent of the arctic? "if it's walkable it's swimmable" is my motto (don't rely on my motto if yr not an elf who can't die except by violence)

xp I thought something might appear to try tp eat her.
& that she hadn't really taken in where she was

Just watched “Saint Maud”, starring Nu Galadriel, this afternoon. I can she why she was cast in the series. She can play a - uhm - particular kind of “determined” pretty well.

the snails are a love & rockets ref y/n

https://i.imgur.com/kMCSuY1.png

ned (aka the bombadil of the internet) will better know the answer to this than me but don't the elves (some elves) at one point get from old valinor (pre sundering) to old middle earth (pre flood) by walking across the equivalent of the arctic? "if it's walkable it's swimmable" is my motto (don't rely on my motto if yr not an elf who can't die except by violence)

Correct:

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Helcarax%C3%AB

As with nearly everything in the Silmarillion the TV show ignores or contradicts this.

idle thought: are the mewlips in the extended universe?

the snails are a love & rockets ref

I like this

xpost Depends on if they feed

watched the first ep. it was enjoyable, and well-made. as a tolkien nerd, i'll never truly enjoy it like it's meant to be enjoyed. i was never so pedantic to get caught up in the differences between book and film in the jackson trilogy, but it's getting to me here.

probably because the whole thing feels like it was re-written by a team of lawyers redlining what the show does and does not have the rights to

Hahahah a very apt summary!

it was kind of incredible how they yadda-yadda’d through like, thousands of years in that intro! i was like, whoooaaa slow down or is this gonna be set like 5 years prior to LOTR

Which makes it all the more surprising that the way they showed the death of the Trees was actually...great? Like not even showing/talking about Ungoliant they pretty much showed what happened, representing Morgoth as a looming shadow was a smart touch, and the whole visual of the Trees going out and the leaves falling off, and did all that in just five or so seconds! (Then they fucked everything else up.)

So it sounds like if I'm someone who has never read a jot of Tolkien nor seen any of the PJ films (shut up, thats why), I might enjoy this more with nothing to compare it to?

Or I might not have a tinker's clue whats going on? I just kept thinking of the Dwemer city in Skyrim in the dwarven scenes.

as ned says, they've evidently somewhat taken the line "ok *fvck* the silmarillion then" (which i am fine with tho some are not): this to the extent that all the pre-existing name characters (exception: galadriel) are insufferable when they're not already THE GREAT FOE(S)

all you need to know really is that the warrior elves sailed from the west to complete some gangsta business and most of them think they did and it's time to go home but it's lookin like they actually didn't uh oh

not knowing who the nudie fireball beardo is = you are currently in exactly the same place as those who actually like remember there are two minas tiriths etc (i mean we do know but some ppl are insisting no it can't be bcz blee blee bloo)

Who is it? I’m assuming a wizard/Istari but not sure which one.

its nudo the problematic wizard

“Is Teleporno here?”